GITREPOSITORY-LAYOU(5)                                     Git Manual                                     GITREPOSITORY-LAYOU(5)



NAME
       gitrepository-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 directory for a public bare repository. It is also possible to have a working 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 repository.

            2. You also could have an incomplete but locally usable repository 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 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
           repository 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.

       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 repository 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 identically 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 suffix 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 modified. 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.

       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 maintained by shallow clone mechanism. See --depth option
           to git-clone(1) and git-fetch(1).

SEE ALSO
       git-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[1]

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite.

NOTES
        1. The Git User's Manual
           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.7.4.4/user-manual.html



Git 1.7.4.4                                                04/11/2011                                     GITREPOSITORY-LAYOU(5)