On Mon, Mar 18 2019, Jeff King wrote: > On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 05:14:59PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > >> The docs have been recommending that users need to run this manually, >> but that hasn't been needed in practice for a long time. >> >> Let's instead have this reflect reality and say that most users don't >> need to run this manually at all. > > Yeah, I think this makes sense. > >> -Users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within >> -each repository to maintain good disk space utilization and good >> -operating performance. >> +Most users should not have to run this command manually. When common >> +porcelain operations that create objects are run, such as >> +linkgit:git-commit[1] and linkgit:git-fetch[1], `git gc --auto` will >> +be run automatically. > > This is in the description, before "--auto" is introduced. I wonder if > it is worth just describing it briefly, like: > > When common porcelain operations that creates objects are run, they > will check whether the repository has grown substantially since the > last maintenance, and if so run `git gc` automatically. > > That gives a first-time reader an idea of whether they need to care > about this command without having to dig into what "--auto" is. Yeah I think that's better. Also more briefly describing gc.auto=0 without an example (suggesting people run that, which for most is a bad idea). I.e. just adding to that "This behavior can be disabled, see `gc.auto` below."