Re: [PATCH 2/2] git-gc: skip stashes when expiring reflogs

From: Mikael Magnusson <mikachu@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 13, 2008, 12:05 UTC
Message-ID: <237967ef0806130505p6082deb5lca15f8f06771b332@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0806130551200.6439@racer>

2008/6/13 Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Eric Raible wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> > Perhaps
>> >
>> >  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/84665/focus=84670
>> >
>> > The user explicitly asks to stash it for a while, where the definition of
>> > the "while" comes from reflog's retention period.
>>
>> But that doesn't answer the basic question as to why it's ok
>> to trash data that the user explicitly asked git to save?
>
> If the user really asked git to save the changes, she would have
> _committed_ them.
>
> "git stash" really is only about shelving quickly and dirtily something
> you'll need (or maybe need) in a moment.
>
> If you need something from the stash a day after stashing it, you have a
> serious problem with understanding what branches are for.

Even if everyone were to eventually agree with this, I think it's a bit rude to teach people who stored something important in a stash for a month that this is the case by deleting their work.

Even with the documentation update, if you're a newbie, you might not know that git in some places automatically calls git gc when you git pull, as in the example Brandon gave.

-- 
Mikael Magnusson