It's so much of an implementation detail, that git didn't have packing at first! All it had was loose objects ("disk space is cheap"). Packing was later added a

It's so much of an implementation detail, that git didn't have packing at first! All it had was loose objects ("disk space is cheap"). Packing was later added as an optimization, but the object model is still the same. It doesn't matter whether an object is in a pack file or not, it's treated the same.