Re: [PATCH 1/4] gc docs: modernize the advice for manually running "gc"

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 18, 2019, 21:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20190318212719.GE29661@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20190318161502.7979-2-avarab@gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 05:14:59PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> The docs have been recommending that users need to run this manually,
> but that hasn't been needed in practice for a long time.
> 
> Let's instead have this reflect reality and say that most users don't
> need to run this manually at all.

Yeah, I think this makes sense.

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> -Users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within
> -each repository to maintain good disk space utilization and good
> -operating performance.
> +Most users should not have to run this command manually. When common
> +porcelain operations that create objects are run, such as
> +linkgit:git-commit[1] and linkgit:git-fetch[1], `git gc --auto` will
> +be run automatically.

This is in the description, before "--auto" is introduced. I wonder if it is worth just describing it briefly, like:

  When common porcelain operations that creates objects are run, they
  will check whether the repository has grown substantially since the
  last maintenance, and if so run `git gc` automatically.

That gives a first-time reader an idea of whether they need to care about this command without having to dig into what "--auto" is.

-Peff