Re: [git-sizer] Implications of a large commit object

[Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com>]

> On 14 Mar 2018, at 09:33, Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 9:14 AM, Lars Schneider
> <larsxschneider@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am using Michael's fantastic Git repo analyzer tool "git-sizer" [*]
>> and it detected a very large commit of 7.33 MiB in my repo (see chart
>> below).
>> 
>> This large commit is expected. I've imported that repo from another
>> version control system but excluded all binary files (e.g. images) and
>> some 3rd party components as their history is not important [**]. I've
>> reintroduced these files in the head commit again. This is where the
>> large commit came from.
>> 
>> This repo is not used in production yet but I wonder if this kind of
>> approach can cause trouble down the line? Are there any relevant
>> implication of a single large commit like this in history?
>> [...]
>> 
>> #######################################################################
>> ## git-sizer output
>> 
>> [...]
>> | Name                         | Value     | Level of concern               |
>> | ---------------------------- | --------- | ------------------------------ |
>> [...]
>> | Biggest objects              |           |                                |
>> | * Commits                    |           |                                |
>> |   * Maximum size         [1] |  7.33 MiB | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
>> [...]
> 
> The "commit size" that is being referred to here is the size of the
> actual commit object; i.e., the author name, parent commits, etc plus
> the log message. So a huge commit probably means that you have a huge
> log message. This has nothing to do with the number or sizes of the
> files added by the commit.
> 
> Maybe your migration tool created a huge commit message, for example
> listing each of the files that was changed.


D'oh! Of course. I was so focused on that commit with the large number of
files that I missed that. Looking at the reference [1] reveals the
problem. Sorry for wasting your time!


> AFAIK this won't cause Git itself any problems, but it's likely to be
> inconvenient. For example, when you type `git log` and 7 million
> characters page by. Or when you use some GUI tool to view your history
> and it performs badly because it wasn't built to handle such enormous
> commit messages.


Thank you,
Lars