Removing unreachable objects in the presence of broken links?

[Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>]

Hi,

I managed to have a few missing objects in my development Linux kernel
repository, which uses another Linux kernel clone as an alternate.
Fortunately nothing is lost, as all missing objects are unreachable.
Probably they were in a branch that has been rebased, and the objects existed
for a small timespan in the alternate when I tried whether a patch created
in the development tree applied cleanly.

Is there a way to force removing unreachable objects in the presence of broken
links?

"git prune" doesn't do it, as it aborts when encountering the first
missing object.
Same with "git repack -[aA]d".

"git fsck" reported
broken link from    tree 1330855dc33c1042b80d4c8ecbb6d56a19557ee8
              to    tree b6c8c53b804662d6a6435c62b6dec1612bfbeb46
broken link from    tree f182e2fa155b9684b79ff6e17159d03d4de9a773
              to    blob d41f9ed0e2aba47ef62b4b4dd211b91cfe474ff8
missing blob d41f9ed0e2aba47ef62b4b4dd211b91cfe474ff8
missing tree b6c8c53b804662d6a6435c62b6dec1612bfbeb46

"git fsck --unreachable HEAD $(git for-each-ref
--format="%(objectname)" refs/heads)"
told me about lots of unreachable objects, including the tree objects that
contain the two broken links.

BTW, every time I now do a rebase that triggers a gc (after the actual rebase
operation has completed), I end up with "(no branch)", so I have to do:
    git banch -D <branch>
    git branch <branch>
    git checkout <branch>
to get back on the branch.
This is with git version 1.7.0.4 (1:1.7.0.4-1ubuntu0.2).

Thanks!

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds