threads / discuss / 41038

Forcing git to pack objects

Subject: Forcing git to pack objects

## tl;dr

3 messages between Dec 19, 2015 and Dec 20, 2015.

replies: 2people: 3as markdown or json

Edmundo Carmona Antoranz· Dec 19, 2015, 01:03 UTC · lore
Hi!

Recently I was running manually a git gc --prune command (wanted to shrink my 2.8G .git directory by getting rid of loose objects) and I ended up running out of space on my HD. After freaking out a little bit (didn't know if the repo would end up in a 'stable' state), I ended up freeing up some space and I again have a working repo... _but_ I noticed that basically _all_ objects on my repo are laying around in directories .git/objects/00 to ff (and taking a whole lot of space... like the .git directory is now like 5 GBs). After running git gc manually again it ended up taking a lot of time and the objects are still there. Also git svn sometimes gcs after fetching and it took to run cause of the gc execution (ended up killing it) and the files are still there. Is it possible to ask git to put all those objects in .pack files? Or did I mess something on my repo?

Just in case, that's a repo I use at work that's working on a windows box (git for windows 2.6.3).

Thanks in advance.
Mikael Magnusson· Dec 20, 2015, 02:25 UTC · re: Edmundo Carmona Antoranz · lore

Re: Forcing git to pack objects

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 2:03 AM, Edmundo Carmona Antoranz <eantoranz@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines
> Hi!
>
> Recently I was running manually a git gc --prune command (wanted to
> shrink my 2.8G .git directory by getting rid of loose objects) and I
> ended up running out of space on my HD. After freaking out a little
> bit (didn't know if the repo would end up in a 'stable' state), I
> ended up freeing up some space and I again have a working repo...
> _but_ I noticed that basically _all_ objects on my repo are laying
> around in directories .git/objects/00 to ff (and taking a whole lot of
> space... like the .git directory is now like 5 GBs). After running git
> gc manually again it ended up taking a lot of time and the objects are
> still there. Also git svn sometimes gcs after fetching and it took to
> run cause of the gc execution (ended up killing it) and the files are
> still there. Is it possible to ask git to put all those objects in
> .pack files? Or did I mess something on my repo?
>
> Just in case, that's a repo I use at work that's working on a windows
> box (git for windows 2.6.3).
>
> Thanks in advance.
git repack -d should do it.
-- 
Mikael Magnusson
Jeff King· Dec 20, 2015, 07:41 UTC · re: Edmundo Carmona Antoranz · lore

Re: Forcing git to pack objects

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 07:03:39PM -0600, Edmundo Carmona Antoranz wrote:
Show 13 quoted lines
> Recently I was running manually a git gc --prune command (wanted to
> shrink my 2.8G .git directory by getting rid of loose objects) and I
> ended up running out of space on my HD. After freaking out a little
> bit (didn't know if the repo would end up in a 'stable' state), I
> ended up freeing up some space and I again have a working repo...
> _but_ I noticed that basically _all_ objects on my repo are laying
> around in directories .git/objects/00 to ff (and taking a whole lot of
> space... like the .git directory is now like 5 GBs). After running git
> gc manually again it ended up taking a lot of time and the objects are
> still there. Also git svn sometimes gcs after fetching and it took to
> run cause of the gc execution (ended up killing it) and the files are
> still there. Is it possible to ask git to put all those objects in
> .pack files? Or did I mess something on my repo?

It sounds like these objects aren't reachable from any of your refs. That would explain:

 - why they don't get packed; we only pack reachable objects.
   There's no easy way with "git gc" or "git repack" to pack unreachable
   objects. If you drop down to the "git pack-objects" level, you can
   manually convince it to do so.
   I have a patch to add "git repack -k", which packs even unreachable
   objects (we use this at GitHub, since our routine repository
   maintenance never deletes objects). If people are interested, I can
   clean it up and post it to the list.
 - why your repo grew during the gc; packed unreachable objects are
   exploded into loose objects during a gc, so they can age and expire
   on their own (we use filesystem mtimes to determine how old they
   are).
   Git is smart enough not to explode loose objects that it is just
   going to prune in a moment.  But the default expiration time is 2
   weeks, so there's a good chance it would want to keep some of them.
   If you use "git gc --prune=now", that should prune everything
   immediately (and this is safe, as long as you know there are no
   simultaneous users of your local repository).
-Peff

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