gitformat-bundle(5) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| FORMAT \| SEMANTICS \| CAPABILITIES \| GIT \| COLOPHON

GITFORMAT-BUNDLE(5)             Git Manual            GITFORMAT-BUNDLE(5)

NAME top

       gitformat-bundle - The bundle file format

SYNOPSIS top

       *.bundle
       *.bdl

DESCRIPTION top

       The Git bundle format is a format that represents both refs and
       Git objects. A bundle is a header in a format similar to
       git-show-ref(1) followed by a pack in *.pack format.

       The format is created and read by the git-bundle(1) command, and
       supported by e.g. git-fetch(1) and git-clone(1).

FORMAT top

       We will use ABNF notation to define the Git bundle format. See
       gitprotocol-common(5) for the details.

       A v2 bundle looks like this:

           bundle    = signature *prerequisite *reference LF pack
           signature = "# v2 git bundle" LF

           prerequisite = "-" obj-id SP comment LF
           comment      = *CHAR
           reference    = obj-id SP refname LF

           pack         = ... ; packfile

       A v3 bundle looks like this:

           bundle    = signature *capability *prerequisite *reference LF pack
           signature = "# v3 git bundle" LF

           capability   = "@" key ["=" value] LF
           prerequisite = "-" obj-id SP comment LF
           comment      = *CHAR
           reference    = obj-id SP refname LF
           key          = 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-")
           value        = *(%01-09 / %0b-FF)

           pack         = ... ; packfile

SEMANTICS top

       A Git bundle consists of several parts.

       •   "Capabilities", which are only in the v3 format, indicate
           functionality that the bundle requires to be read properly.

       •   "Prerequisites" list the objects that are NOT included in the
           bundle and the reader of the bundle MUST already have, in
           order to use the data in the bundle. The objects stored in the
           bundle may refer to prerequisite objects and anything
           reachable from them (e.g. a tree object in the bundle can
           reference a blob that is reachable from a prerequisite) and/or
           expressed as a delta against prerequisite objects.

       •   "References" record the tips of the history graph, iow, what
           the reader of the bundle CAN "git fetch" from it.

       •   "Pack" is the pack data stream "git fetch" would send, if you
           fetch from a repository that has the references recorded in
           the "References" above into a repository that has references
           pointing at the objects listed in "Prerequisites" above.

       In the bundle format, there can be a comment following a
       prerequisite obj-id. This is a comment and it has no specific
       meaning. The writer of the bundle MAY put any string here. The
       reader of the bundle MUST ignore the comment.

   Note on shallow clones and Git bundles
       Note that the prerequisites do not represent a shallow-clone
       boundary. The semantics of the prerequisites and the shallow-clone
       boundaries are different, and the Git bundle v2 format cannot
       represent a shallow clone repository.

CAPABILITIES top

       Because there is no opportunity for negotiation, unknown
       capabilities cause git bundle to abort.

       •   object-format specifies the hash algorithm in use, and can
           take the same values as the extensions.objectFormat
           configuration value.

       •   filter specifies an object filter as in the --filter option in
           git-rev-list(1). The resulting pack-file must be marked as a
           .promisor pack-file after it is unbundled.

GIT top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-08-07.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.51.0.rc1                  2025-08-07            GITFORMAT-BUNDLE(5)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-bundle(1), gitformat-pack(5)