Re: [PATCH 1/3] repack: modify behavior of -A option to leave unreferenced objects unpacked

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, May 09, 2008 at 11:01:55PM -0500, drafnel@gmail.com wrote:

> -		keep_unreachable=--keep-unreachable ;;
> +		keep_unreachable=t ;;

Can we call this something else (like unpack_unreachable) since it now
has nothing to do with the --keep-unreachable flag?

Also, should --keep-unreachable be deprecated / removed?

> +			*)
> +				rm -f "$e.idx" "$e.keep"
> +				if test -n "$keep_unreachable" &&
> +				   test -f "$e.pack"
> +				then
> +					git unpack-objects < "$e.pack" || {
> +						echo >&2 "Failed unpacking unreachable objects from redundant pack file $e.pack"
> +						exit 1
> +					}
> +				fi

I still like Geert's suggestion of unpacking them to a _different_
place. That helps to avoid spurious "gc --auto" invocations caused by
too many prunable objects. Though it certainly doesn't solve it, and
maybe that just needs to be fixed separately.

Possibly the "gc --auto" test should be:

  - count objects; if too few, exit
  - count unreachable loose objects; if too few, exit
  - run gc

That means having a lot of unreachable objects will still incur some
extra processing, but not as much as a full repack. And it won't bug the
user with a "you need to repack" message.

-Peff