Re: "disabling bitmap writing, as some objects are not being packed"?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 16, 2016, 21:49 UTC
Message-ID: <20161216214906.z53yp2x4n6hdc27m@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1481924416.28176.19.camel@frank>

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 04:40:16PM -0500, David Turner wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> I would assume, based on the documentation, that auto gc would be doing
> an all-into-one repack:
> "If the number of packs exceeds the value of gc.autopacklimit, then
>  existing packs (except those marked with a .keep file) are
>  consolidated into a single pack by using the -A option of git
>  repack."
> 
> I don't have any settings that limit the size of packs, either.  And a
> manual git repack -a -d creates only a single pack.  Its loneliness
> doesn't last long, because pretty soon a new pack is created by an
> incoming push.

The interesting code is in need_to_gc():

        /*
         * If there are too many loose objects, but not too many
         * packs, we run "repack -d -l".  If there are too many packs,
         * we run "repack -A -d -l".  Otherwise we tell the caller
         * there is no need.
         */
        if (too_many_packs())
                add_repack_all_option();
        else if (!too_many_loose_objects())
                return 0;

So if you have (say) 10 packs and 10,000 objects, we'll incrementally pack those objects into a single new pack.

I never noticed this myself because we do not use auto-gc at GitHub at all. We only ever do a big all-into-one repack.

> Unless this just means that some objects are being kept loose (perhaps
> because they are unreferenced)?

If they're unreferenced, they won't be part of the new pack. You might accumulate loose objects that are ejected from previous packs, which could trigger auto-gc to do an incremental pack (even though it wouldn't be productive, because they're unreferenced!). You may also get them from pushes (small pushes will be exploded into loose objects by default).

-Peff