Re: Rewriting history with git-filter-branch and leaking objects (?)

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Aug 17, 2007, 17:34 UTC
Message-ID: <86k5ruxdxz.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz>
In-Reply-To: <20070817171851.GB13891@glandium.org>

Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> I've been playing with git-filter-branch, and was wondering how objects
> from the original branch are supposed to be removed.
>
> It looks like removing the refs/original/* refs is not enough.
>
> And it also looks like when all references seem to be removed, git-prune
> doesn't fully do its job...

It is quite quite hard to get rid of objects. You need to get the reflogs for the commits and the files expired.

The last time I tried this, I ended up unpacking the packed objects, calling git-fsck with appropriate options to tell me about unreferenced objects when ignoring reflogs, and removing the files manually with xargs and rm.

Probably I was not able to do something reasonably intelligent, but making git actually _lose_ data/commits/whatever is really, really hard. I have messed up my repo structure considerably several times, and everything is still there, with the reflog telling you how to get it.

Given how easy it is to shoot oneself in the foot with git, it is not the worst thing. But you really have to work if you _mean_ it.

-- 
David Kastrup