# gitrepository-layout(5) Manual Page

## 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

## GIT

Part of the git(1) suite.