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authorJohannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>2008-03-12 21:55:47 +0100
committerJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>2008-03-12 23:47:01 -0700
commit25ee9731c137d0a24b0f4879eb0b0cce9b77d5b0 (patch)
tree28f94a286b4903b3c00f4154c7ad2f63bb9d104b /Documentation/git-gc.txt
parentdbdbfec4413d24f9a423c3e2b86a002489f4acbb (diff)
downloadgit-25ee9731c137d0a24b0f4879eb0b0cce9b77d5b0.tar.gz
gc: call "prune --expire 2.weeks.ago" by default
The only reason we did not call "prune" in git-gc was that it is an inherently dangerous operation: if there is a commit going on, you will prune loose objects that were just created, and are, in fact, needed by the commit object just about to be created. Since it is dangerous, we told users so. That led to many users not even daring to run it when it was actually safe. Besides, they are users, and should not have to remember such details as when to call git-gc with --prune, or to call git-prune directly. Of course, the consequence was that "git gc --auto" gets triggered much more often than we would like, since unreferenced loose objects (such as left-overs from a rebase or a reset --hard) were never pruned. Alas, git-prune recently learnt the option --expire <minimum-age>, which makes it a much safer operation. This allows us to call prune from git-gc, with a grace period of 2 weeks for the unreferenced loose objects (this value was determined in a discussion on the git list as a safe one). If you want to override this grace period, just set the config variable gc.pruneExpire to a different value; an example would be [gc] pruneExpire = 6.months.ago or even "never", if you feel really paranoid. Note that this new behaviour makes "--prune" be a no-op. While adding a test to t5304-prune.sh (since it really tests the implicit call to "prune"), also the original test for "prune --expire" was moved there from t1410-reflog.sh, where it did not belong. Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/git-gc.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-gc.txt17
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 12 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-gc.txt b/Documentation/git-gc.txt
index 2e7be916aa..229a7c9b30 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-gc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-gc.txt
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
SYNOPSIS
--------
-'git-gc' [--prune] [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet]
+'git-gc' [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet]
DESCRIPTION
-----------
@@ -25,17 +25,6 @@ operating performance. Some git commands may automatically run
OPTIONS
-------
---prune::
- Usually `git-gc` packs refs, expires old reflog entries,
- packs loose objects,
- and removes old 'rerere' records. Removal
- of unreferenced loose objects is an unsafe operation
- while other git operations are in progress, so it is not
- done by default. Pass this option if you want it, and only
- when you know nobody else is creating new objects in the
- repository at the same time (e.g. never use this option
- in a cron script).
-
--aggressive::
Usually 'git-gc' runs very quickly while providing good disk
space utilization and performance. This option will cause
@@ -104,6 +93,10 @@ the value, the more time is spent optimizing the delta compression. See
the documentation for the --window' option in linkgit:git-repack[1] for
more details. This defaults to 10.
+The optional configuration variable 'gc.pruneExpire' controls how old
+the unreferenced loose objects have to be before they are pruned. The
+default is "2 weeks ago".
+
See Also
--------
linkgit:git-prune[1]