Re: Trying to use git-filter-branch to compress history by removing large, obsolete binary files

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 10:36:50AM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> Having it by default leave these backups around, even when everything
> succeeds, makes for unnecessary cleanup work in the normal case, and is
> inconsistent with the behavior of other git commands that destroy or
> rewrite history.

I think what makes git-filter-branch different is that you can change
a large amount of history with git-filter-branch, including large
numbers of tags, etc.  The reflog is quite sufficient to recover from
a screwed up "git commit --amend".  But I don't think the reflog is
going to be sufficient given the kinds of changes that
git-filter-branch can potentially do to your repository.  Maybe
default of --backup vs --no-backup could be changed via a config
parameter, but I think the default is of backing up refs is a good
think....

Perhaps a solution would be to add "git-filter-branch --cleanup" that
that clears the reflog and wipes the backed up tags; perhaps first
asking interactively if the user is really sure he/she wants to do
this.

						- Ted