Re: Forcing GC to always fail

[Bryan Turner <bturner@atlassian.com>]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 3:47 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 27 2018, Bryan Turner wrote:
>
> >
> > Is there anything I can set, perhaps some invalid configuration
> > option/value, that will make "git gc" (most important) and "git
> > reflog" (ideal, but less important) fail when they're run in our
> > repositories? Hopefully at that point customers will reach out to us
> > for help _before_ they corrupt their repositories.
>
> You could fix this and so many other issues by just hanging up a "Is
> This Good For The Company?" banner up in Atlassian offices .

Not sure I understand what this means, or what your goal was in saying
it. No one inside Atlassian is running these commands. I'm trying to
help save administrators from themselves, which reduces real world
end-user pain that comes from decisions made without fully
understanding the consequences. It feels like this comment is mocking
my earnest desire to help, and my genuine question looking for any
insight people more familiar with the code might be able to offer.
Perhaps I'm just missing the joke, but if it's an Office Space
reference it feels like it's in pretty poor taste.

>
> But more seriously:
>
>     $ stahp='Bryan.Turner.will.hunt.you.down.if.you.manually.run.gc' && git -c gc.pruneExpire=$stahp gc; git -c gc.reflogExpire=$stahp reflog expire
>     error: Invalid gc.pruneexpire: 'Bryan.Turner.will.hunt.you.down.if.you.manually.run.gc'
>     fatal: unable to parse 'gc.pruneexpire' from command-line config
>     error: 'Bryan.Turner.will.hunt.you.down.if.you.manually.run.gc' for 'gc.reflogexpire' is not a valid timestamp
>     fatal: unable to parse 'gc.reflogexpire' from command-line config

Thanks for that! It looks like that does block both "git gc" and "git
reflog expire" without blocking "git pack-refs", "git repack" or "git
prune". Fantastic! The fact that it shows the invalid value means it
might also be possible to at least provide a useful hint that manual
GC is not safe.

I appreciate your help, Ævar.

Bryan