From: Pierre Ossman Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:10:23 GMT Subject: Re: [External] git keeps recreating packs, exploding backup increments Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On 21/02/2025 09:16, Patrick Steinhardt wrote: >> >> Anything I/we can do to shed more light on the issue? > > Well, one of the interesting things to learn would be how often you end > up updating those repositories. You have discovered "gc.autoPackLimit" > already, which determines when exactly Git is going to repack existing > packfiles into one, and mentioned that it doesn't seem to help you. But > whether it does or doesn't help really depends on how frequently you > gain new packfiles in the impacted repositories. > > When you have fast-moving repositories and developers fetch several > times per day, then it is quite likely that they accumulate multiple new > packfiles per day. And thus, it's not all that unexpected that you will > have to repack the whole repository rather regularly. If so, this is > working as designed. You can tune the parameters for how often Git will > do an all-into-one repack, but also have to keep in mind that the more > packfiles there are, the less efficient Git will in general be. > I don't think the most problematic repo should be moving that fast. But I might be wrong. We've reverted all settings to default, and we'll try to keep an eye on what happens to the pack files to gain more understanding. > That being said, there is an alternative: Git nowadays doesn't use > git-gc(1) anymore to perform auto-maintenance, but instead it invokes > git-maintenance(1). And that command allows the user to pick what tasks > should be performed. By default it uses git-gc(1) under the hood indeed, > but you also ask it to not do so and instead use an alternative > mechanism to pack your objects. > Thanks. This is definitely something we can try. We'll observe the system for now, to establish a new baseline. Then we'll try some of these settings and see how it affect things. Regards, -- Pierre Ossman Software Development Cendio AB https://cendio.com Teknikringen 8 https://twitter.com/ThinLinc 583 30 Linköping https://facebook.com/ThinLinc Phone: +46-13-214600 A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?