Inside Git: .Git directory (bonus)

Goals

• Learn about Git directory structure.git.

01 The .git directory

It is time to do some research. Starting from the project’s root directory...

Run

ls -C .git

Result

$ ls -C .git
COMMIT_EDITMSG	MERGE_RR	config		hooks		info		objects		rr-cache
HEAD		ORIG_HEAD	description	index		logs		refs

This is a special folder where all the Git stuff is. Let us explore the directory.

02 Object Database

Run

ls -C .git/objects

Result

$ ls -C .git/objects
09	24	28	45	59	6a	77	80	8c	97	af	c4	e7	info
11	27	43	56	69	6b	78	84	91	9c	b5	e4	fa	pack

You should see a lot of folders named with two characters. The first two letters of the SHA1 hash of the objects stored in Git are the directory names.

03 Inquire the database objects

Run

ls -C .git/objects/<dir>

Result

$ ls -C .git/objects/09
6b74c56bfc6b40e754fc0725b8c70b2038b91e	9fb6f9d3a104feb32fcac22354c4d0e8a182c1

Let us look at one of the folders named with two characters. There should be files with names of 38 characters. These files contain objects stored in Git. They are compressed and encrypted, so it’s impossible to view their contents directly. Let us have a better look at Git directory

04 Config File

Run

cat .git/config

Result

$ cat .git/config
[core]
	repositoryformatversion = 0
	filemode = true
	bare = false
	logallrefupdates = true
	ignorecase = true
[user]
	name = Alexander Shvets
	email = alex@githowto.com

This configuration file is created for each individual project. At least in this project, entries in this file will overwrite the entries in the .gitconfig file of your main directory.

05 Branches and tags

Run

ls .git/refs
ls .git/refs/heads
ls .git/refs/tags
cat .git/refs/tags/v1

Result

$ ls .git/refs
heads
tags
$ ls .git/refs/heads
main
$ ls .git/refs/tags
v1
v1-beta
$ cat .git/refs/tags/v1
fa3c1411aa09441695a9e645d4371e8d749da1dc

Files in the tags subdirectory should be familiar to you. Each file corresponds to the tag previously created using the git tag command. Its content is nothing but a hash commit attached to the tag.

The heads folder is almost identical and is used not for tags, but branches. At the moment we have only one branch, and everything you see in this folder is a main branch.

06 HEAD File

Run

cat .git/HEAD

Result

$ cat .git/HEAD
ref: refs/heads/main

There is a reference to the current branch in the HEAD file. At the moment it must be the main branch.