On Thu, Jun 08, 2017 at 02:45:48PM +0200, Lars Schneider wrote:
> I recently ran into "There are too many unreachable loose objects; run
> 'git prune' to remove them." after a "Auto packing the repository in
> background for optimum performance." message.
>
> This was introduced with a087cc9 "git-gc --auto: protect ourselves from
> accumulated cruft" but I don't understand the commit message really.
>
> Why don't we call 'git prune' automatically? I though Git would prune
> unreachable objects after 90 days by default anyways. Is the warning
> about unreachable objects that are not yet 90 days old?
We _do_ call "git prune", but we do so with whatever configured
expiration time is (by default 2 weeks; the 90-day expiration is for
reflogs).
The problem is that auto-gc kicked in because there were a bunch of
loose objects, but after repacking and running "git prune" there were
still enough loose objects to trigger auto-gc. Which means every command
you run will do an auto-gc that never actually helps.
So you have two options:
1. Wait until those objects expire (which may be up to 2 weeks,
depending on how recent they are), at which point your auto-gc will
finally delete them.
2. Run "git prune". Without an argument it prunes everything now,
with no expiration period.
I agree the existing message isn't great. There should probably be a big
advise() block explaining what's going on (and that expert users can
disable).
-Peff