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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-doc/user-manual.html