I'm going to address your comments soon (thanks by the way, making up summary line for each option from git-pack-objects.txt was painful) but since you like thought-provoking, check this comment out: /* Traditionally "pack-objects [options] base extra" failed; * we would however want to take refs parameter that would * have been given to upstream rev-list ourselves, which means * we somehow want to say what the base name is. So the * syntax would be: * * pack-objects [options] base <refs...> * * in other words, we would treat the first non-option as the * base_name and send everything else to the internal revision * walker. */ The last paragraph does not hold true anymore as far as I understand the code. IOW it drops everything in argv after base name. Looking back in history, the change was made by 8d1d8f8 (pack-objects: further work on internal rev-list logic. - 2006-09-06). Nothing is mentioned why it drops the remaining of argv. I suspect this is a regression and we should reinstate the behavior as the comment says. -- Duy -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html