Re: git pull for update of netdev fails.

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Shawn Pearce wrote:
> > 
> > A lot of people do things like "git repack -a -d" by hand, and we've tried 
> > to encourage people to do so in cron-jobs etc. We've even had patches 
> > floating around that do it automatically after a pull.
> 
> Ouch.  That's really bad.

Well, what did you think the "-d" stood for?

It stands for "delete old packs".

There are exactly two operations that delete git objects: "git prune" and 
"git repack -d". Nothing else should ever do it, but those two definitely 
do. They're designed to.

I wouldn't call it "really bad" - it's part of the design. It's only bad 
if you didn't realize what "-d" means.

> I knew it but didn't realize it until just now.
> 
> 	git repack -a -d
> 	git branch -D foo
> 	git repack -a -d
> 
> and *poof* no foo.

Exactly. 

I thought people realized this, but apparently sometimes it's just an 
intellectual understanding of what something does, without realizing what 
that thing actually _means_ in a deeper way.

			Linus