Re: git pull for update of netdev fails.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Sep 20, 2006, 16:38 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0609200934140.4388@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20060920162810.GB23260@spearce.org>

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Shawn Pearce wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> > 
> > A lot of people do things like "git repack -a -d" by hand, and we've tried 
> > to encourage people to do so in cron-jobs etc. We've even had patches 
> > floating around that do it automatically after a pull.
> 
> Ouch.  That's really bad.

Well, what did you think the "-d" stood for?

It stands for "delete old packs".

There are exactly two operations that delete git objects: "git prune" and "git repack -d". Nothing else should ever do it, but those two definitely do. They're designed to.

I wouldn't call it "really bad" - it's part of the design. It's only bad if you didn't realize what "-d" means.

Show 7 quoted lines

> I knew it but didn't realize it until just now.
> 
> 	git repack -a -d
> 	git branch -D foo
> 	git repack -a -d
> 
> and *poof* no foo.

Exactly.

I thought people realized this, but apparently sometimes it's just an intellectual understanding of what something does, without realizing what that thing actually _means_ in a deeper way.

			Linus