From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:38:57 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/4] run auto maintenance in git-gui
Message-ID: <7905c1d6-ae6e-4930-b4bf-d1129685d10f@kdbg.org>
In-Reply-To: <876fd32d-3965-4587-b567-399787741247@app.fastmail.com>

Am 11.03.26 um 05:48 schrieb Wolfgang Faust:
> However, it seems to me that the conditions you outlined are very
> unlikely.

This was the whole point of my argument.

> In particular:
> 
>> - They configure maintenance.* to do more cleanups than the default
>> confituration (which is the same as `git gc --auto`, I think).
>>
>> - They never use `git maintenance run` through some other facility.
> 
> Are these not more or less mutually exclusive? Why would someone set
> up maintenance to do things, and then never run maintenance?

The system configuration could be set to non-default values.

But it would need quite some determination from a user to side-step any
and all explicit and implicit `git maintenance` calls on such a system
instead of countermanding the configuration in the personal (global or
local) settings.

My point is only that these conditions aren't mutually exclusive, but
still unlikely in practice.

> Given the above, I see two options:
> 
> 1. Assume that in practice everybody wants auto maintenance and
>    `gui.gcwarning` is set because they were annoyed by the dialog.
> 2. Assume that some people do *not* want auto maintenance, and if the
>    `gui.gcmaintenance` option is unset then show some kind of dialog
>    that tries to explain the situation to the user and encourages them
>    to set `gui.gcmaintenance=auto`.
> 
> #2 is the safer option, but is rather complicated and involves
> bothering every user for the sake of strict compatibility. I assume
> that git core itself had to make a similar tradeoff when deciding to
> enable automatic garbage collection, but I don't know where I'd find
> that discussion and perhaps it's far enough in the past that the
> rationales are no longer relevant anyway.

Let's just call `git maintenance` on every commit except when, for
legacy reasons, gui.gcwarning is false. No new configuration, please,
until there is proof that Git GUI users really do not want the standard
`git maintenance` behavior.

-- Hannes