# How to cut extra liftime of expired loose objects 3 messages from 2016-05-30 to 2016-05-30. Participants: Johannes Sixt, Jeff King, Junio C Hamano. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/42488 ## Johannes Sixt, 2016-05-30 16:43 Subject: How to cut extra liftime of expired loose objects Message-ID: <574C6D9B.1080200@kdbg.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/574C6D9B.1080200%40kdbg.org ``` I think there is logic somewhere in git gc or its minions that gives expired objects that have been packed a two weeks extra life time as loose objects. That is, reachable loose objects are moved to a pack, but those objects that were packed, but become unreachable due to expired reflogs, are evicted from the pack and live for another two weeks or so as loose objects. As a consequence of this, I always have a few thousand loose objects in my busy repositories, no matter how often I collect garbage. Is there a knob that removes the extra lease of life of objects without reducing the usual expiration times of reflogs etc? -- Hannes ``` ## Jeff King, 2016-05-30 18:24 Subject: Re: How to cut extra liftime of expired loose objects Message-ID: <20160530182405.GA17253@sigill.intra.peff.net> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20160530182405.GA17253%40sigill.intra.peff.net In-Reply-To: <574C6D9B.1080200@kdbg.org> ``` On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 06:43:07PM +0200, Johannes Sixt wrote: > I think there is logic somewhere in git gc or its minions that gives expired > objects that have been packed a two weeks extra life time as loose objects. > > That is, reachable loose objects are moved to a pack, but those objects that > were packed, but become unreachable due to expired reflogs, are evicted from > the pack and live for another two weeks or so as loose objects. Sort of. The loose objects should get the mtime of the pack, which is likely newer than 2 weeks. So it's not a 2-week extension, but it may take up to 2 weeks for them to go away (and if the pack is already more than 2 weeks old, the objects are dropped without even loosening). > As a consequence of this, I always have a few thousand loose objects in my > busy repositories, no matter how often I collect garbage. Is there a knob > that removes the extra lease of life of objects without reducing the usual > expiration times of reflogs etc? gc.pruneExpire should do this. I have run into this, too, and it interacts annoyingly with the background-gc (which complains "you have too many objects; run git-prune", leaves that in a .lock file, and then every subsequent auto-gc spews it at me). I think we should consider dropping the default time to something more like 1 day. The 2-week period predates reflogs, I believe (OTOH, it does save objects which you might have used with "git add" but never actually committed). -Peff ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2016-05-30 18:53 Subject: Re: How to cut extra liftime of expired loose objects Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/xmqqpos38jix.fsf%40gitster.mtv.corp.google.com In-Reply-To: <20160530182405.GA17253@sigill.intra.peff.net> ``` Jeff King writes: > I think we should consider dropping the default time to something more > like 1 day. The 2-week period predates reflogs, I believe (OTOH, it does > save objects which you might have used with "git add" but never actually > committed). Your belief is shared by me. ```