Re: [PATCH v2] repack: Add option to preserve and prune old pack files

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 11, 2017, 12:38 UTC
Message-ID: <CACBZZX4guVXWDHgAotdNa6CqTSv3iNSWpdCbexJQ_Y3AXU+AUQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170310220020.2666-1-jmelvin@codeaurora.org>

On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 11:00 PM, James Melvin <jmelvin@codeaurora.org> wrote:

> The new --preserve-and-prune option renames old pack files
> instead of deleting them after repacking and prunes previously
> preserved pack files.

I think some of this rationale...

Show 6 quoted lines

> This option is designed to prevent stale file handle exceptions
> during git operations which can happen on users of NFS repos when
> repacking is done on them. The strategy is to preserve old pack files
> around until the next repack with the hopes that they will become
> unreferenced by then and not cause any exceptions to running processes
> when they are finally deleted (pruned).

...belongs in the actual docs, i.e. here:

> +--preserve-and-prune::
> +        Preserve old pack files by renaming them instead of deleting. Prune any
> +        previously preserved pack files before preserving new ones.
> +

This is a really obscure option with an obscure use-case, let's explain that in the docs, and also mention NFS & what problems it solves there, so someone having the same issue can find the solution more easily.