Re: git-gui: disable the "loose objects popup" dialog?

From: Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com>
Date: Sep 26, 2019, 21:14 UTC
Message-ID: <497c6951-6eba-9794-2590-2f34388598f4@xiplink.com>
In-Reply-To: <20190926191545.ro7w6lbtlpbyxpk7@yadavpratyush.com>

On 2019-09-26 3:15 p.m., Pratyush Yadav wrote:

Show 32 quoted lines

> On 26/09/19 08:54PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> Am 26.09.19 um 19:31 schrieb Birger Skogeng Pedersen:
>>> Every once in a while, I get the "This repository currently has
>>> approximately (some number) loose objects." popup dialog.
>>>
>>> I don't want to sound arrogant, but I find this popup along with the
>>> dialog showing after that prints the result of the compression,
>>> immensely annoying. And I've seen people mention before that they
>>> would, in some casese, rather not have to deal with the dialog[0].
>>>
>>> [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1106529/how-to-skip-loose-object-popup-when-running-git-gui
>>>
>>> I get that git-gui merely wants to resolve a performance issue. But
>>> personally I'd prefer if git could just assume I always wanted to
>>> compress the database, and automatically do it without bugging me with
>>> the popups.
>>
>> I dislike the popup, too. But I want total control over my repository:
>> No automatic compression behind my back, in particular, when that
>> expires reflogs, and git-gui does that.
> 
> I agree. Doing stuff like this in background by default is not the best
> idea IMHO. If the user asks explicitly, fine, but don't do it by
> default.
>   
>>> I propose we implement the following options in git-gui:
>>> - ignore loose objects (do not show the popup), disabled by default.
> 
> Reading the Stackoverflow link, it seems this is already possible via an
> undocumented config variable "gui.gcwarning". I haven't tried using it
> though, but I see no reason for it to not work (looking at
> git-gui.sh:4141).

I use this, and it works. I haven't seen that dialog in years of near-daily repo usage.

> Maybe we should add this variable in the options dialog, so people at
> least know it exists?

My experience with qui.gcwarning (i.e. that git-gui hasn't compressed my repo in a very long time) suggests that we can just get rid of this part of git-gui. I seem to recall that this was suggested the last time this was discussed, because the rest of git's auto-gc machinery is now working quite well (compared to when git-gui was first introduced).

M.

Show 15 quoted lines

>>> - automatically, silently compress the database, without prompt. Also
>>> disabled by default.
>>
>> What about a configurable limit, but still show the dialog?
> 
> Do people really care that much about configuring this limit to warrant
> something like this?
> 
> 
> Talking about auto compression, would it be a better idea to let users
> disable the dialog, and then if they do want auto compression, they can
> just run a cron job (or the Windows equivalent) to do this on their
> repos? What reasons do people have to have this feature in git-gui,
> instead of running cron jobs?
>