git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: [PATCH 4/5] gc: don't run "reflog expire" when keeping reflogs

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
Mar 14, 2019, 00:40 UTC
Message-ID
<20190314004006.GI31968@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<20190313235439.30439-5-avarab@gmail.com>
On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 12:54:38AM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> Don't redundantly run "git reflog expire --all" when gc.reflogExpire
> and gc.reflogExpireUnreachable are set to "never".
> 
> I'm being careful to not repeat the issue fixed in
> 8ab5aa4bd8 ("parseopt: handle malformed --expire arguments more
> nicely", 2018-04-21). We'll die early if the config variables are set
> to invalid values.

I think the general sentiment here makes sense, that reflog expiration should be a noop if we're set to "never" anyway.

It does feel a little funny for "gc" to be peeking into the internals of how "reflog" will make its decision about how to run, though. I doubt those rules are likely to change, but if they did, there'd be very little to remind somebody working on reflog that they need to change the matching rules here.

Is our problem running "git reflog" at all, or is it that "git reflog" does too much work even when it's been told "never"? If the latter, could we just have it exit early as soon as it's figured out the prune expiry dates it's using?

I.e., something like:
diff --git a/builtin/reflog.c b/builtin/reflog.c
index 4d3430900d..aab221f315 100644
--- a/builtin/reflog.c
+++ b/builtin/reflog.c
@@ -594,6 +594,15 @@ static int cmd_reflog_expire(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 			break;
 	}
 
+	/*
+	 * If we're not expiring anything and not dropping stale entries,
+	 * there's no point in even opening the reflogs, since we're guaranteed
+	 * to do nothing.
+	 */
+	if (!cb.cmd.expire_total && !cb.cmd.expire_unreachable &&
+	    !cb.cmd.stalefix)
+		return 0;
+
 	/*
 	 * We can trust the commits and objects reachable from refs
 	 * even in older repository.  We cannot trust what's reachable

Seeing "--stale-fix" again reminded me: that may be the "oops, we can
spend tons of CPU walking history" bit that I mentioned in the other
part of the thread. But I don't think git-gc would ever run with that
option.

-Peff
Previous: Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonNext: Junio C Hamano
Message 54 of 60 in “BUG: Race condition due to reflog expiry in "gc"”
  1. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 12, 2019
  2. Junio C HamanoMar 13, 2019
  3. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 13, 2019
  4. Jeff KingMar 13, 2019
  5. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 13, 2019
  6. 0/5 gc: minor code cleanup + contention fixesÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 13, 2019
  7. 0/7 gc: minor code cleanup + contention fixesÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  8. 0/8 gc: minor code cleanup + contention fixesÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  9. Junio C HamanoMar 18, 2019
  10. 0/7 gc: tests and handle reflog expire configÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  11. 1/7 gc: remove redundant check for gc_auto_thresholdÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  12. 2/7 gc: convert to using the_hash_algoÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  13. 3/7 gc: refactor a "call me once" patternÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  14. 5/7 reflog tests: test for the "points nowhere" warningÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  15. 4/7 reflog tests: make use of "test_config" idiomÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  16. 7/7 gc: handle & check gc.reflogExpire configÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  17. 6/7 reflog tests: assert lack of early exit with expiry="never"Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 28, 2019
  18. 1/8 gc: remove redundant check for gc_auto_thresholdÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  19. 2/8 gc: convert to using the_hash_algoÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  20. 3/8 gc: refactor a "call me once" patternÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  21. 4/8 reflog tests: make use of "test_config" idiomÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  22. 5/8 reflog tests: test for the "points nowhere" warningÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  23. 6/8 reflog tests: assert lack of early exit with expiry="never"Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  24. Jeff KingMar 19, 2019
  25. 7/8 gc: handle & check gc.reflogExpire configÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  26. 8/8 reflog expire: don't assert the OID when locking refsÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 15, 2019
  27. Jeff KingMar 19, 2019
  28. 1/7 gc: remove redundant check for gc_auto_thresholdÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  29. 2/7 gc: convert to using the_hash_algoÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  30. Duy NguyenMar 15, 2019
  31. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 15, 2019
  32. Johannes SchindelinMar 15, 2019
  33. 3/7 gc: refactor a "call me once" patternÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  34. 4/7 reflog tests: make use of "test_config" idiomÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  35. 5/7 reflog: exit early if there's no work to doÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  36. Duy NguyenMar 15, 2019
  37. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 15, 2019
  38. 7/7 reflog expire: don't assert the OID when locking refsÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  39. Duy NguyenMar 15, 2019
  40. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 15, 2019
  41. 6/7 gc: don't run "reflog expire" when keeping reflogsÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 14, 2019
  42. Duy NguyenMar 15, 2019
  43. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 15, 2019
  44. Duy NguyenMar 15, 2019
  45. Johannes SchindelinMar 15, 2019
  46. Junio C HamanoMar 18, 2019
  47. 1/5 gc: remove redundant check for gc_auto_thresholdÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 13, 2019
  48. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  49. 2/5 gc: convert to using the_hash_algoÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 13, 2019
  50. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  51. 3/5 gc: refactor a "call me once" patternÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 13, 2019
  52. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  53. 4/5 gc: don't run "reflog expire" when keeping reflogsÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 13, 2019
  54. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  55. Junio C HamanoMar 14, 2019
  56. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  57. 5/5 reflog expire: don't assert the OID when locking refsÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Mar 13, 2019
  58. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  59. Jeff KingMar 14, 2019
  60. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 21, 2019

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.