GIT-COMMIT-GRAPH(1)

okay so this is GIT-COMMIT-GRAPH(1) from the Git manual — the commit-graph page, bestie — and we're about to make it make sense 💖 every flag, every default, every warning is staying, no cap. keep your hands inside the ride, the vibes are immaculate ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

git-commit-graph — write and verify Git commit-graph files. that's the whole assignment: you're either writing one or verifying one, and honestly? iconic 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

       git commit-graph verify [--object-dir <dir>] [--shallow] [--[no-]progress]
       git commit-graph write [--object-dir <dir>] [--append]
                               [--split[=<strategy>]] [--reachable | --stdin-packs | --stdin-commits]
                               [--changed-paths] [--[no-]max-new-filters <n>] [--[no-]progress]
                               <split-options>

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so the job is literally to manage the serialized commit-graph file. that's it, that's the description, and it's giving "small but powerful" 💅

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --object-dir — use the given directory for the location of packfiles and commit-graph file. this parameter exists so you can specify the location of an alternate that only has the objects directory, not a full .git directory. the commit-graph file is expected to be in the <dir>/info directory, and the packfiles are expected to be in <dir>/pack. if the directory could not be made into an absolute path, or does not match any known object directory, git commit-graph ... will exit with non-zero status. 💀
• --progress, --no-progress — turn progress on/off explicitly. if neither is specified, progress is shown if standard error is connected to a terminal. ✨

🦋 COMMANDS 🦋

💅 write

write a commit-graph file based on the commits found in packfiles. if the config option core.commitGraph is disabled, then this command will output a warning, then return success without writing a commit-graph file. so it's like "ok bestie I hear you, but no" 😭

• with the --stdin-packs option, generate the new commit graph by walking objects only in the specified pack-indexes. (cannot be combined with --stdin-commits or --reachable.)
• with the --stdin-commits option, generate the new commit graph by walking commits starting at the commits specified in stdin as a list of OIDs in hex, one OID per line. OIDs that resolve to non-commits (either directly, or by peeling tags) are silently ignored. OIDs that are malformed, or do not exist generate an error. (cannot be combined with --stdin-packs or --reachable.)
• with the --reachable option, generate the new commit graph by walking commits starting at all refs. (cannot be combined with --stdin-commits or --stdin-packs.)
• with the --append option, include all commits that are present in the existing commit-graph file.
• with the --changed-paths option, compute and write information about the paths changed between a commit and its first parent. this operation can take a while on large repositories. it provides significant performance gains for getting history of a directory or a file with git log -- <path>. if this option is given, future commit-graph writes will automatically assume that this option was intended. use --no-changed-paths to stop storing this data. --changed-paths is implied by config commitGraph.changedPaths=true. 🔥
• with the --max-new-filters=<n> option, generate at most n new Bloom filters (if --changed-paths is specified). if n is -1, no limit is enforced. only commits present in the new layer count against this limit. to retroactively compute Bloom filters over earlier layers, it is advised to use --split=replace. overrides the commitGraph.maxNewFilters configuration.
• with the --split[=<strategy>] option, write the commit-graph as a chain of multiple commit-graph files stored in <dir>/info/commit-graphs. commit-graph layers are merged based on the strategy and other splitting options. the new commits not already in the commit-graph are added in a new "tip" file. this file is merged with the existing file if the following merge conditions are met:
  • if --split=no-merge is specified, a merge is never performed, and the remaining options are ignored. --split=replace overwrites the existing chain with a new one. a bare --split defers to the remaining options. (note that merging a chain of commit graphs replaces the existing chain with a length-1 chain where the first and only incremental holds the entire graph).
  • if --size-multiple=<X> is not specified, let X equal 2. if the new tip file would have N commits and the previous tip has M commits and X times N is greater than M, instead merge the two files into a single file.
  • if --max-commits=<M> is specified with M a positive integer, and the new tip file would have more than M commits, then instead merge the new tip with the previous tip.
  • finally, if --expire-time=<datetime> is not specified, let datetime be the current time. after writing the split commit-graph, delete all unused commit-graph whose modified times are older than datetime.

🔍 verify

read the commit-graph file and verify its contents against the object database. used to check for corrupted data. it's the vibe check for your graph, bestie 💅

with the --shallow option, only check the tip commit-graph file in a chain of split commit-graphs.

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

• write a commit-graph file for the packed commits in your local .git directory.

$ git commit-graph write

• write a commit-graph file, extending the current commit-graph file using commits in <pack-index>.

$ echo <pack-index> | git commit-graph write --stdin-packs

• write a commit-graph file containing all reachable commits.

$ git show-ref -s | git commit-graph write --stdin-commits

• write a commit-graph file containing all commits in the current commit-graph file along with those reachable from HEAD.

$ git rev-parse HEAD | git commit-graph write --stdin-commits --append

💀 CAVEATS 💀

the existence of replace objects or commit grafts turns off reading or writing to the commit-graph. see git-replace(1). like, it's a whole thing — don't come for me, that's just how it is 🙈

🧚 CONFIGURATION 🧚

everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1) documentation. the content is the same as what's found there, so you know it's legit 🫶

commitGraph.generationVersion

specifies the type of generation number version to use when writing or reading the commit-graph file. if version 1 is specified, then the corrected commit dates will not be written or read. defaults to 2.

commitGraph.maxNewFilters

specifies the default value for the --max-new-filters option of git commit-graph write (c.f., git-commit-graph(1)).

commitGraph.changedPaths

if true, then git commit-graph write will compute and write changed-path Bloom filters by default, equivalent to passing --changed-paths. if false or unset, changed-paths Bloom filters will be written during git commit-graph write only if the filters already exist in the current commit-graph file. this matches the default behavior of git commit-graph write without any --[no-]changed-paths option. to rewrite a commit-graph file without any filters, use the --no-changed-paths option. command-line option --[no-]changed-paths always takes precedence over this configuration. defaults to unset. 💖

commitGraph.readChangedPaths

deprecated. equivalent to commitGraph.changedPathsVersion=-1 if true, and commitGraph.changedPathsVersion=0 if false. (if commitGraph.changedPathVersion is also set, commitGraph.changedPathsVersion takes precedence.)

commitGraph.changedPathsVersion

specifies the version of the changed-path Bloom filters that Git will read and write. may be -1, 0, 1, or 2. note that values greater than 1 may be incompatible with older versions of Git which do not yet understand those versions. use caution when operating in a mixed-version environment. 😭

defaults to -1.

if -1, Git will use the version of the changed-path Bloom filters in the repository, defaulting to 1 if there are none.

if 0, Git will not read any Bloom filters, and will write version 1 Bloom filters when instructed to write.

if 1, Git will only read version 1 Bloom filters, and will write version 1 Bloom filters.

if 2, Git will only read version 2 Bloom filters, and will write version 2 Bloom filters.

see git-commit-graph(1) for more information.

🍓 FILE FORMAT 🍓

see gitformat-commit-graph(5). that's the whole section, bestie — it's a short king 👑

⭐ GIT ⭐

part of the git(1) suite. obviously. 💅

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27 — the manual page is GIT-COMMIT-GRAPH(1), and now you know every last detail. go write (or verify) some commit-graphs, no cap 🫶✨