GITREPOSITORY-LAYO(5)GITREPOSITORY-LAYO(5)NAMEgitrepository-layout - Git Repository Layout
SYNOPSIS
$GIT_DIR/*
DESCRIPTION
You may find these things in your git repository (.git directory for a
repository associated with your working tree, or <project>.git direc-
tory for a public bare repository. It is also possible to have a work-
ing tree where .git is a plain ASCII file containing gitdir: <path>,
i.e. the path to the real git repository).
objects
Object store associated with this repository. Usually an object
store is self sufficient (i.e. all the objects that are referred
to by an object found in it are also found in it), but there are
couple of ways to violate it.
1. You could populate the repository by running a commit walker
without -a option. Depending on which options are given, you
could have only commit objects without associated blobs and
trees this way, for example. A repository with this kind of
incomplete object store is not suitable to be published to
the outside world but sometimes useful for private reposi-
tory.
2. You also could have an incomplete but locally usable reposi-
tory by cloning shallowly. See git-clone(1).
3. You can be using objects/info/alternates mechanism, or
$GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES mechanism to borrow objects
from other object stores. A repository with this kind of
incomplete object store is not suitable to be published for
use with dumb transports but otherwise is OK as long as
objects/info/alternates points at the right object stores it
borrows from.
objects/[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]
Traditionally, each object is stored in its own file. They are
split into 256 subdirectories using the first two letters from
its object name to keep the number of directory entries objects
directory itself needs to hold. Objects found here are often
called unpacked (or loose) objects.
objects/pack
Packs (files that store many object in compressed form, along
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GITREPOSITORY-LAYO(5)GITREPOSITORY-LAYO(5)
with index files to allow them to be randomly accessed) are
found in this directory.
objects/info
Additional information about the object store is recorded in
this directory.
objects/info/packs
This file is to help dumb transports discover what packs are
available in this object store. Whenever a pack is added or
removed, git update-server-info should be run to keep this file
up-to-date if the repository is published for dumb transports.
git repack does this by default.
objects/info/alternates
This file records paths to alternate object stores that this
object store borrows objects from, one pathname per line. Note
that not only native Git tools use it locally, but the HTTP
fetcher also tries to use it remotely; this will usually work if
you have relative paths (relative to the object database, not to
the repository!) in your alternates file, but it will not work
if you use absolute paths unless the absolute path in filesystem
and web URL is the same. See also objects/info/http-alternates.
objects/info/http-alternates
This file records URLs to alternate object stores that this
object store borrows objects from, to be used when the reposi-
tory is fetched over HTTP.
refs References are stored in subdirectories of this directory. The
git prune command knows to keep objects reachable from refs
found in this directory and its subdirectories.
refs/heads/name
records tip-of-the-tree commit objects of branch name
refs/tags/name
records any object name (not necessarily a commit object, or a
tag object that points at a commit object).
refs/remotes/name
records tip-of-the-tree commit objects of branches copied from a
remote repository.
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packed-refs
records the same information as refs/heads/, refs/tags/, and
friends record in a more efficient way. See git-pack-refs(1).
HEAD A symref (see glossary) to the refs/heads/ namespace describing
the currently active branch. It does not mean much if the repos-
itory is not associated with any working tree (i.e. a bare
repository), but a valid git repository must have the HEAD file;
some porcelains may use it to guess the designated "default"
branch of the repository (usually master). It is legal if the
named branch name does not (yet) exist. In some legacy setups,
it is a symbolic link instead of a symref that points at the
current branch.
HEAD can also record a specific commit directly, instead of
being a symref to point at the current branch. Such a state is
often called detached HEAD, and almost all commands work identi-
cally as normal. See git-checkout(1) for details.
branches
A slightly deprecated way to store shorthands to be used to
specify URL to git fetch, git pull and git push commands is to
store a file in branches/<name> and give name to these commands
in place of repository argument.
hooks Hooks are customization scripts used by various git commands. A
handful of sample hooks are installed when git init is run, but
all of them are disabled by default. To enable, the .sample suf-
fix has to be removed from the filename by renaming. Read
githooks(5) for more details about each hook.
index The current index file for the repository. It is usually not
found in a bare repository.
info Additional information about the repository is recorded in this
directory.
info/refs
This file helps dumb transports discover what refs are available
in this repository. If the repository is published for dumb
transports, this file should be regenerated by git
update-server-info every time a tag or branch is created or mod-
ified. This is normally done from the hooks/update hook, which
is run by the git-receive-pack command when you git push into
the repository.
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info/grafts
This file records fake commit ancestry information, to pretend
the set of parents a commit has is different from how the commit
was actually created. One record per line describes a commit and
its fake parents by listing their 40-byte hexadecimal object
names separated by a space and terminated by a newline.
info/exclude
This file, by convention among Porcelains, stores the exclude
pattern list. .gitignore is the per-directory ignore file. git
status, git add, git rm and git clean look at it but the core
git commands do not look at it. See also: gitignore(5).
remotes
Stores shorthands to be used to give URL and default refnames to
interact with remote repository to git fetch, git pull and git
push commands.
logs Records of changes made to refs are stored in this directory.
See git-update-ref(1) for more information.
logs/refs/heads/name
Records all changes made to the branch tip named name.
logs/refs/tags/name
Records all changes made to the tag named name.
shallow
This is similar to info/grafts but is internally used and main-
tained by shallow clone mechanism. See --depth option to
git-clone(1) and git-fetch(1).
SEE ALSOgit-init(1), git-clone(1), git-fetch(1), git-pack-refs(1), git-gc(1),
git-checkout(1), gitglossary(7), The Git User’s Manual: user-man-
ual.html
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite.
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