There is no ".git" file. It's a directory with a lot of files. Some of the packing has been storage optimisations but the logical model (objects identified by h

There is no ".git" file. It's a directory with a lot of files. Some of the packing has been storage optimisations but the logical model (objects identified by hash) has remained the same throughout. The nice thing about this is you can present the same logical model while being flexible about the way that model is persisted, unlike Mercurial which has a fixed file format upon which operations are based.