git/Documentation/technical/commit-graph-format.txt

Git commit graph format
=======================

The Git commit graph stores a list of commit OIDs and some associated
metadata, including:

- The generation number of the commit. Commits with no parents have
  generation number 1; commits with parents have generation number
  one more than the maximum generation number of its parents. We
  reserve zero as special, and can be used to mark a generation
  number invalid or as "not computed".

- The root tree OID.

- The commit date.

- The parents of the commit, stored using positional references within
  the graph file.

These positional references are stored as unsigned 32-bit integers
corresponding to the array position withing the list of commit OIDs. We
use the most-significant bit for special purposes, so we can store at most
(1 << 31) - 1 (around 2 billion) commits.

== Commit graph files have the following format:

In order to allow extensions that add extra data to the graph, we organize
the body into "chunks" and provide a binary lookup table at the beginning
of the body. The header includes certain values, such as number of chunks
and hash type.

All 4-byte numbers are in network order.

HEADER:

  4-byte signature:
      The signature is: {'C', 'G', 'P', 'H'}

  1-byte version number:
      Currently, the only valid version is 1.

  1-byte Hash Version (1 = SHA-1)
      We infer the hash length (H) from this value.

  1-byte number (C) of "chunks"

  1-byte (reserved for later use)
     Current clients should ignore this value.

CHUNK LOOKUP:

  (C + 1) * 12 bytes listing the table of contents for the chunks:
      First 4 bytes describe the chunk id. Value 0 is a terminating label.
      Other 8 bytes provide the byte-offset in current file for chunk to
      start. (Chunks are ordered contiguously in the file, so you can infer
      the length using the next chunk position if necessary.) Each chunk
      ID appears at most once.

  The remaining data in the body is described one chunk at a time, and
  these chunks may be given in any order. Chunks are required unless
  otherwise specified.

CHUNK DATA:

  OID Fanout (ID: {'O', 'I', 'D', 'F'}) (256 * 4 bytes)
      The ith entry, F[i], stores the number of OIDs with first
      byte at most i. Thus F[255] stores the total
      number of commits (N).

  OID Lookup (ID: {'O', 'I', 'D', 'L'}) (N * H bytes)
      The OIDs for all commits in the graph, sorted in ascending order.

  Commit Data (ID: {'C', 'G', 'E', 'T' }) (N * (H + 16) bytes)
    * The first H bytes are for the OID of the root tree.
    * The next 8 bytes are for the positions of the first two parents
      of the ith commit. Stores value 0xffffffff if no parent in that
      position. If there are more than two parents, the second value
      has its most-significant bit on and the other bits store an array
      position into the Large Edge List chunk.
    * The next 8 bytes store the generation number of the commit and
      the commit time in seconds since EPOCH. The generation number
      uses the higher 30 bits of the first 4 bytes, while the commit
      time uses the 32 bits of the second 4 bytes, along with the lowest
      2 bits of the lowest byte, storing the 33rd and 34th bit of the
      commit time.

  Large Edge List (ID: {'E', 'D', 'G', 'E'}) [Optional]
      This list of 4-byte values store the second through nth parents for
      all octopus merges. The second parent value in the commit data stores
      an array position within this list along with the most-significant bit
      on. Starting at that array position, iterate through this list of commit
      positions for the parents until reaching a value with the most-significant
      bit on. The other bits correspond to the position of the last parent.

TRAILER:

	H-byte HASH-checksum of all of the above.