Re: git-repack made my pack 317x larger...

[linux@horizon.com]

>> Uh... what happened?  It's not a full kernel clone, but it's a lot more
>> objects than I expected.  Where did all the extra objects come from?

> Maybe you want to add -l as well to your git-repack invocation.

Ah.  Thank you.  Indeed, this is another example of git documentation
disease.  git-repack refers to git-pack-objects, which gives a very
technical explanation of what it does, but nowhere is it mentioned that
list of objects suppled to git-pack-object's stdin includes objects
borrowed from alternates.

Of course, reading the description of git-rev-list --objects, you might
get the impression, but it's not exactly hugely obvious.

Given that "git-repack -f" is a not uncommon command, could I suggest
that the default is wrong, and there should be a special flag for
"suck in alternates, so this repository is no longer dependent
on any others".

Mentally, git-repack is a "reduce space consumption" command, not an
increase one.  Having to remember that this repository uses alternates
and add an extra flag to avoid having a space explosion is distinctly
annoying.

(I might complan a little less if git-repack would take -adlf rather
than insisting on -a -d -l -f.  Is that a deliberate choice or has just
nobody stepped up to revamp the option parsing?)