gitprotocol-pack - How packs are transferred over-the-wire

Git supports transferring data in packfiles over the ssh://, git://, http:// and file:// transports. There exist two sets of protocols, one for pushing data from a client to a server and another for fetching data from a server to a client. The three transports (ssh, git, file) use the same protocol to transfer data. http is documented in gitprotocol-http[5].

The processes invoked in the canonical Git implementation are upload-pack on the server side and fetch-pack on the client side for fetching data; then receive-pack on the server and send-pack on the client for pushing data. The protocol functions to have a server tell a client what is currently on the server, then for the two to negotiate the smallest amount of data to send in order to fully update one or the other.

The descriptions below build on the pkt-line format described in gitprotocol-common[5]. When the grammar indicates PKT-LINE(...), unless otherwise noted the usual pkt-line LF rules apply: the sender SHOULD include a LF, but the receiver MUST NOT complain if it is not present.

An error packet is a special pkt-line that contains an error string.

Throughout the protocol, where PKT-LINE(...) is expected, an error packet MAY be sent. Once this packet is sent by a client or a server, the data transfer process defined in this protocol is terminated.

There are three transports over which the packfile protocol is initiated. The Git transport is a simple, unauthenticated server that takes the command (almost always upload-pack, though Git servers can be configured to be globally writable, in which receive- pack initiation is also allowed) with which the client wishes to communicate and executes it and connects it to the requesting process.

In the SSH transport, the client just runs the upload-pack or receive-pack process on the server over the SSH protocol and then communicates with that invoked process over the SSH connection.

The file:// transport runs the upload-pack or receive-pack process locally and communicates with it over a pipe.

The protocol provides a mechanism in which clients can send additional information in its first message to the server. These are called "Extra Parameters", and are supported by the Git, SSH, and HTTP protocols.

Each Extra Parameter takes the form of <key>=<value> or <key>.

Servers that receive any such Extra Parameters MUST ignore all unrecognized keys. Currently, the only Extra Parameter recognized is "version" with a value of 1 or 2. See gitprotocol-v2[5] for more information on protocol version 2.

The Git transport starts off by sending the command and repository on the wire using the pkt-line format, followed by a NUL byte and a hostname parameter, terminated by a NUL byte.

The transport may send Extra Parameters by adding an additional NUL byte, and then adding one or more NUL-terminated strings:

host-parameter is used for the git-daemon name based virtual hosting. See --interpolated-path option to git daemon, with the %H/%CH format characters.

Basically what the Git client is doing to connect to an upload-pack process on the server side over the Git protocol is this:

Initiating the upload-pack or receive-pack processes over SSH is executing the binary on the server via SSH remote execution. It is basically equivalent to running this:

For a server to support Git pushing and pulling for a given user over SSH, that user needs to be able to execute one or both of those commands via the SSH shell that they are provided on login. On some systems, that shell access is limited to only being able to run those two commands, or even just one of them.

In an ssh:// format URI, it’s absolute in the URI, so the / after the host name (or port number) is sent as an argument, which is then read by the remote git-upload-pack exactly as is, so it’s effectively an absolute path in the remote filesystem.

In a "user@host:path" format URI, it’s relative to the user’s home directory, because the Git client will run:

The exception is if a ~ is used, in which case we execute it without the leading /.

Depending on the value of the protocol.version configuration variable, Git may attempt to send Extra Parameters as a colon-separated string in the GIT_PROTOCOL environment variable. This is done only if the ssh.variant configuration variable indicates that the ssh command supports passing environment variables as an argument.

A few things to remember here:

When one Git repository wants to get data that a second repository has, the first can fetch from the second. This operation determines what data the server has that the client does not then streams that data down to the client in packfile format.

When the client initially connects the server will immediately respond with a version number (if "version=1" is sent as an Extra Parameter), and a listing of each reference it has (all branches and tags) along with the object name that each reference currently points to.

The returned response is a pkt-line stream describing each ref and its current value. The stream MUST be sorted by name according to the C locale ordering.

If HEAD is a valid ref, HEAD MUST appear as the first advertised ref. If HEAD is not a valid ref, HEAD MUST NOT appear in the advertisement list at all, but other refs may still appear.

The stream MUST include capability declarations behind a NUL on the first ref. The peeled value of a ref (that is "ref^{}") MUST be immediately after the ref itself, if presented. A conforming server MUST peel the ref if it’s an annotated tag.

Server and client MUST use lowercase for obj-id, both MUST treat obj-id as case-insensitive.

See protocol-capabilities.txt for a list of allowed server capabilities and descriptions.

After reference and capabilities discovery, the client can decide to terminate the connection by sending a flush-pkt, telling the server it can now gracefully terminate, and disconnect, when it does not need any pack data. This can happen with the ls-remote command, and also can happen when the client already is up to date.

Otherwise, it enters the negotiation phase, where the client and server determine what the minimal packfile necessary for transport is, by telling the server what objects it wants, its shallow objects (if any), and the maximum commit depth it wants (if any). The client will also send a list of the capabilities it wants to be in effect, out of what the server said it could do with the first want line.

Clients MUST send all the obj-ids it wants from the reference discovery phase as want lines. Clients MUST send at least one want command in the request body. Clients MUST NOT mention an obj-id in a want command which did not appear in the response obtained through ref discovery.

The client MUST write all obj-ids which it only has shallow copies of (meaning that it does not have the parents of a commit) as shallow lines so that the server is aware of the limitations of the client’s history.

The client now sends the maximum commit history depth it wants for this transaction, which is the number of commits it wants from the tip of the history, if any, as a deepen line. A depth of 0 is the same as not making a depth request. The client does not want to receive any commits beyond this depth, nor does it want objects needed only to complete those commits. Commits whose parents are not received as a result are defined as shallow and marked as such in the server. This information is sent back to the client in the next step.

The client can optionally request that pack-objects omit various objects from the packfile using one of several filtering techniques. These are intended for use with partial clone and partial fetch operations. An object that does not meet a filter-spec value is omitted unless explicitly requested in a want line. See rev-list for possible filter-spec values.

Once all the want’s and 'shallow’s (and optional 'deepen) are transferred, clients MUST send a flush-pkt, to tell the server side that it is done sending the list.

Otherwise, if the client sent a positive depth request, the server will determine which commits will and will not be shallow and send this information to the client. If the client did not request a positive depth, this step is skipped.

If the client has requested a positive depth, the server will compute the set of commits which are no deeper than the desired depth. The set of commits starts at the client’s wants.

The server writes shallow lines for each commit whose parents will not be sent as a result. The server writes an unshallow line for each commit which the client has indicated is shallow, but is no longer shallow at the currently requested depth (that is, its parents will now be sent). The server MUST NOT mark as unshallow anything which the client has not indicated was shallow.

Now the client will send a list of the obj-ids it has using have lines, so the server can make a packfile that only contains the objects that the client needs. In multi_ack mode, the canonical implementation will send up to 32 of these at a time, then will send a flush-pkt. The canonical implementation will skip ahead and send the next 32 immediately, so that there is always a block of 32 "in-flight on the wire" at a time.

If the server reads have lines, it then will respond by ACKing any of the obj-ids the client said it had that the server also has. The server will ACK obj-ids differently depending on which ack mode is chosen by the client.

In multi_ack mode:

In multi_ack_detailed mode:

Without either multi_ack or multi_ack_detailed:

After the client has gotten enough ACK responses that it can determine that the server has enough information to send an efficient packfile (in the canonical implementation, this is determined when it has received enough ACKs that it can color everything left in the --date-order queue as common with the server, or the --date-order queue is empty), or the client determines that it wants to give up (in the canonical implementation, this is determined when the client sends 256 have lines without getting any of them ACKed by the server - meaning there is nothing in common and the server should just send all of its objects), then the client will send a done command. The done command signals to the server that the client is ready to receive its packfile data.

However, the 256 limit only turns on in the canonical client implementation if we have received at least one "ACK %s continue" during a prior round. This helps to ensure that at least one common ancestor is found before we give up entirely.

Once the done line is read from the client, the server will either send a final ACK obj-id or it will send a NAK. obj-id is the object name of the last commit determined to be common. The server only sends ACK after done if there is at least one common base and multi_ack or multi_ack_detailed is enabled. The server always sends NAK after done if there is no common base found.

Instead of ACK or NAK, the server may send an error message (for example, if it does not recognize an object in a want line received from the client).

Then the server will start sending its packfile data.

A simple clone may look like this (with no have lines):

An incremental update (fetch) response might look like this:

Now that the client and server have finished negotiation about what the minimal amount of data that needs to be sent to the client is, the server will construct and send the required data in packfile format.

See gitformat-pack[5] for what the packfile itself actually looks like.

If side-band or side-band-64k capabilities have been specified by the client, the server will send the packfile data multiplexed.

Each packet starting with the packet-line length of the amount of data that follows, followed by a single byte specifying the sideband the following data is coming in on.

In side-band mode, it will send up to 999 data bytes plus 1 control code, for a total of up to 1000 bytes in a pkt-line. In side-band-64k mode it will send up to 65519 data bytes plus 1 control code, for a total of up to 65520 bytes in a pkt-line.

The sideband byte will be a 1, 2 or a 3. Sideband 1 will contain packfile data, sideband 2 will be used for progress information that the client will generally print to stderr and sideband 3 is used for error information.

If no side-band capability was specified, the server will stream the entire packfile without multiplexing.

Pushing data to a server will invoke the receive-pack process on the server, which will allow the client to tell it which references it should update and then send all the data the server will need for those new references to be complete. Once all the data is received and validated, the server will then update its references to what the client specified.

The protocol itself contains no authentication mechanisms. That is to be handled by the transport, such as SSH, before the receive-pack process is invoked. If receive-pack is configured over the Git transport, those repositories will be writable by anyone who can access that port (9418) as that transport is unauthenticated.

The reference discovery phase is done nearly the same way as it is in the fetching protocol. Each reference obj-id and name on the server is sent in packet-line format to the client, followed by a flush-pkt. The only real difference is that the capability listing is different - the only possible values are report-status, report-status-v2, delete-refs, ofs-delta, atomic and push-options.

Once the client knows what references the server is at, it can send a list of reference update requests. For each reference on the server that it wants to update, it sends a line listing the obj-id currently on the server, the obj-id the client would like to update it to and the name of the reference.

This list is followed by a flush-pkt.

If the server has advertised the push-options capability and the client has specified push-options as part of the capability list above, the client then sends its push options followed by a flush-pkt.

For backwards compatibility with older Git servers, if the client sends a push cert and push options, it MUST send its push options both embedded within the push cert and after the push cert. (Note that the push options within the cert are prefixed, but the push options after the cert are not.) Both these lists MUST be the same, modulo the prefix.

After that the packfile that should contain all the objects that the server will need to complete the new references will be sent.

If the receiving end does not support delete-refs, the sending end MUST NOT ask for delete command.

If the receiving end does not support push-cert, the sending end MUST NOT send a push-cert command. When a push-cert command is sent, command-list MUST NOT be sent; the commands recorded in the push certificate is used instead.

The packfile MUST NOT be sent if the only command used is delete.

A packfile MUST be sent if either create or update command is used, even if the server already has all the necessary objects. In this case the client MUST send an empty packfile. The only time this is likely to happen is if the client is creating a new branch or a tag that points to an existing obj-id.

The server will receive the packfile, unpack it, then validate each reference that is being updated that it hasn’t changed while the request was being processed (the obj-id is still the same as the old-id), and it will run any update hooks to make sure that the update is acceptable. If all of that is fine, the server will then update the references.

A push certificate begins with a set of header lines. After the header and an empty line, the protocol commands follow, one per line. Note that the trailing LF in push-cert PKT-LINEs is not optional; it must be present.

Currently, the following header fields are defined:

The GPG signature lines are a detached signature for the contents recorded in the push certificate before the signature block begins. The detached signature is used to certify that the commands were given by the pusher, who must be the signer.

After receiving the pack data from the sender, the receiver sends a report if report-status or report-status-v2 capability is in effect. It is a short listing of what happened in that update. It will first list the status of the packfile unpacking as either unpack ok or unpack [error]. Then it will list the status for each of the references that it tried to update. Each line is either ok [refname] if the update was successful, or ng [refname] [error] if the update was not.

The report-status-v2 capability extends the protocol by adding new option lines in order to support reporting of reference rewritten by the proc-receive hook. The proc-receive hook may handle a command for a pseudo-reference which may create or update one or more references, and each reference may have different name, different new-oid, and different old-oid.

Updates can be unsuccessful for a number of reasons. The reference can have changed since the reference discovery phase was originally sent, meaning someone pushed in the meantime. The reference being pushed could be a non-fast-forward reference and the update hooks or configuration could be set to not allow that, etc. Also, some references can be updated while others can be rejected.

An example client/server communication might look like this:

Part of the git[1] suite