GoKawiilDeveloper redesigns Git packfile format to run natively on object storage
A developer building an open-source Git server on top of object storage (Tigris) found that standard Git packfiles, designed for local disk and memory-mapped access, performed poorly when objects had to be fetched via byte-range guesses from cloud buckets. After an initial filesystem-shim approach failed at production scale, they created a new columnar packfile format built specifically for object storage, which required no changes to Git clients and performed well on real-world repositories.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
Several companies are racing to build Git-compatible products on cloud storage backends, and this work highlights a core technical obstacle: Git's on-disk data structures assume local filesystem behavior that doesn't map cleanly to buckets. A workable native packfile format could make it easier to scale Git hosting on cheap object storage without breaking compatibility with existing Git tooling.
- Standard Git packfiles rely on memory-mapping and local disk access, making them inefficient for object storage lookups.
- A simple filesystem-emulation layer over object storage failed to scale for real-world repository sizes.
- The new columnar packfile format needs no client-side changes and reportedly performs well in production-scale tests.
Source: tigrisdata.com — Xe Iaso, 2026-09-16
Published there as: “You can run Git on object storage if you re-make packfiles”
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