What is objects/17 git directory?

[Alexey Efimov]

Hello,

Can anyone explain that purpose of objects/17 directory inside .git directory?

Thanks!

[Johannes Kilian · Accepted solution]

Each 'git commit'

• creates a unique commit Id (160-bit SHA-1 hash - calculated from the contents of the commit)
• stores its data within the folder .git/objects within subfolders

==> The subfolders are created from the first two characters of your current commit-ID. The files within the subfolders are named from the rest of your commit-ID

This splitting is probably done to avoid thousands of files within a single folder.

---------------------

Example:

Your commitID is 17556a21ebc68ce39bb53f26af9a590eb76d8c46

-> corresponding data is stored within .git/objects/17/556a21ebc68ce39bb53f26af9a590eb76d8c46

[Alexey Efimov]

Bitbucket server code (GC scheduler) used exactly objects/17 dir. This is some of special directory i guess, but i can't find any docs about this directory.

And, yes, i know that is two first symbols from commit hash. My question is little bit another 

[Michael Heemskerk]

Bitbucket Server checks how many loose objects there are in the 17 directory to decide whether a gc needs to be run. The assumption is that loose objects should be reasonably evenly distributed across the different object directories, so the count in 17 is a reasonable indicator. There's nothing special about 17 though..

[Alexey Efimov]

If directory does not exists will GC never executed?