Re: dangling commits and blobs: is this normal?

> Jeff King wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 05:46:16PM -0400, John Dlugosz wrote:
> > 
> >> Immediately after doing a git gc, a git fsck --full reports dangling
> >> objects.  Is this normal?  What does dangling mean, if not those things
> >> that gc finds?
> > 
> > gc will leave dangling loose objects for a set expiration time
> > (defaulting to two weeks). This makes it safe to run even if there are
> > operations in progress that want those dangling objects, but haven't yet
> > added a reference to them (as long as said operation takes less than two
> > weeks).
> > 
> > You can also end up with dangling objects in packs. When that pack is
> > repacked, those objects will be loosened, and then eventually expired
> > under the rule mentioned above. However, I believe gc will not always
> > repack old packs; it will make new packs until you have a lot of packs,
> > and then combine them all (at least that is what "gc --auto" will do; I
> > don't recall whether just "git gc" follows the same rule).
> 
> 'git gc' (without --auto) always creates one new pack.
> 
> I've often wondered whether a plain 'git gc' should adopt the behavior
> of --auto with respect to the number of packs.  If there were few packs,
> then 'git gc' would do an incremental repack, rather than a 'repack -A -d -l'.