Re: [PATCH 2/2] git-gc: skip stashes when expiring reflogs

From: Brandon Casey <casey@nrlssc.navy.mil>
Date: Jun 11, 2008, 23:25 UTC
Message-ID: <co7kgJpJNdIs2f8n_PwYKAS7MwV9t1G_P3BPr1eXTZ4ytUHcsPvVaw@cipher.nrlssc.navy.mil>
In-Reply-To: <20080611230344.GD19474@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 10:44:17PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
>> FWIW I thought it was one of the clever designs of git-stash that it 
>> automatically expires together with the other reflogs.  A stash is only a 
>> temporary thing, that is not even meant to leave the local repository, 
>> after all.
> 
> I agree. If you are concerned about valuable stashes getting deleted, my
> guess is one of:
> 
>   - you would like reflog expiration to be longer
> 
>   - you are using stash as a long-term storage, which it was never
>     intended for. Use a branch.
> 
> The latter, of course, is based on my use and my impression of others
> use (I almost always apply a stash within 30 seconds of having stashed
> it). So maybe everyone is keeping stashes around for months, and this is
> a useful change.

Yes, I think usually stashes are used for very short term storage. At the same time, I don't expect a stash (however old) to disappear without me explicitly deleting it.

In particular, I don't want to experience this:

$ git stash list stash@{0}: WIP on master: 8c372fb... git-cvsimport: do not fail when CVS is / $ git pull $ git stash apply fatal: Needed a single revision : no valid stashed state found

This would not _surprise_ me since I understand how stashes are implemented _and_ that git-pull could cause git-gc to run which runs 'git-reflog expire' which may remove entries from the stash reflog, but it is probably not expected by most users and it would still irritate me if it did happen.

-brandon