Re: [PATCH] git-am: Run git gc only once and not for every patch.

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Jan 4, 2008, 20:58 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0801041555220.2649@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <477E9536.6050401@redhat.com>

On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, Michael Stefaniuc wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, Michael Stefaniuc wrote:
> > 
> >> With "too many unreachable loose objects" git gc --auto will always
> >> trigger. This clutters the output of git am and thus git rebase.
> >>
> >> The work flow of the Wine project doesn't include git merge. git rebase
> >> is therefor used to track the origin. This will produce soon too many
> >> loose objects for git gc --auto's taste. Pruning the repository would
> >> "fix" it. But we tell Wine developers new to git to NOT prune as long as
> >> they aren't confident enough with git; just as a safety net in case they
> >> have thrown away month of work.
> > 
> > The safety is the reflog.  What it refers to doesn't get pruned.
> Then git gc --auto should just prune too and not spam, right?

Pruning might be dangerous if some other operation is happening concurrently, which is why it is not done by default.

> But the reflog is only there for branches that still exist; the rest is
> gone. A git stash clear will also remove the reflog for the stash.

But the reflog for HEAD remains nevertheless, and it contains everything that happened to be the current branch.

> Regardless of the safety of git prune i don't see a reason why git gc
> --auto needs to be called for every patch in a git-am run and not once
> at the end.

Indeed.

Nicolas