Re: [PATCH] prune: --expire=time

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >
> > So to recap: "git prune" simply isn't a safe thing to do. Don't do it 
> > without thinking. I'm not at all sure it's a good idea that "git gc" does 
> > it for you, since it just encourages mindless pruning that probably 
> > shouldn't happen in the first place.
> 
> I guess we are in agreement on this.

Well, having complained about "git prune", I at the same time have to 
admit that I worry about loose objects (and scary messages from 
git-fsck-objects) potentially confusing new people.

So "git prune" _does_ remove stuff that happens normally. It removes stuff 
that accumulates (even with reflog) thanks to commands that were 
interrupted with ^C, and it also removes the auto-merge turds that the 
recursive merge can create when it does its internal pseudo-commit for 
more complex merges.

So I don't think running "prune" from within "git gc" is necessarily 
wrong per se - I just don't think it's a good idea to do so by _default_, 
exactly because of the issues it can have. 

So hiding "git prune" behind "git gc" is probably a good thing (make 
people learn just one thing they need to interface to), but maybe we need 
a "--prune" flag to the gc command, and then perhaps just document that 
you should be careful.

		Linus