Re: Should object repacking only update server-info for packs instead of doing it for refs?

[Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2024 at 02:14:59PM +0200, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> > >> I think it's reasonable to skip this step when repacking, but of course
> > >> we would still want to update info/packs (assuming that the repack
> > >> wasn't a noop, of course).
> > >
> > > It certainly may be reasonable. But in my opinion, it would be even more
> > > reasonable to not use the dumb HTTP transport at all. If you don't there
> > > is no reason to run git-update-server-info(1) in the first place, so
> > > you'd neither generate info/refs nor info/packs.
> >
> > I don’t believe anyone uses it anymore, but someone *may* still use
> > it, and therefore, Git should update the info/packs during geometric
> > repacking. However, why not introduce a “kill switch” in git config to
> > disable it so that all tools can automatically skip the expensive
> > info/packs (and info/refs) updates?
>
> We already have those, see "repack.updateServerInfo" and
> "receive.updateServerInfo". Not quite a single kill switch, but it is
> possible :)

There is also 'git repack -n' (which I know GitHub uses) to disable
updating info/refs and info/packs as a command-line flag (if for
whatever reason modifying the 'git repack' invocation is more
convenient than touching the repository configuration).

Thanks,
Taylor