Re: [External] git keeps recreating packs, exploding backup increments

[Pierre Ossman <ossman@cendio.se>]

On 21/02/2025 09:16, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
>>
>> Anything I/we can do to shed more light on the issue?
> 
> Well, one of the interesting things to learn would be how often you end
> up updating those repositories. You have discovered "gc.autoPackLimit"
> already, which determines when exactly Git is going to repack existing
> packfiles into one, and mentioned that it doesn't seem to help you. But
> whether it does or doesn't help really depends on how frequently you
> gain new packfiles in the impacted repositories.
> 
> When you have fast-moving repositories and developers fetch several
> times per day, then it is quite likely that they accumulate multiple new
> packfiles per day. And thus, it's not all that unexpected that you will
> have to repack the whole repository rather regularly. If so, this is
> working as designed. You can tune the parameters for how often Git will
> do an all-into-one repack, but also have to keep in mind that the more
> packfiles there are, the less efficient Git will in general be.
> 

I don't think the most problematic repo should be moving that fast. But 
I might be wrong. We've reverted all settings to default, and we'll try 
to keep an eye on what happens to the pack files to gain more understanding.

> That being said, there is an alternative: Git nowadays doesn't use
> git-gc(1) anymore to perform auto-maintenance, but instead it invokes
> git-maintenance(1). And that command allows the user to pick what tasks
> should be performed. By default it uses git-gc(1) under the hood indeed,
> but you also ask it to not do so and instead use an alternative
> mechanism to pack your objects.
> 

Thanks. This is definitely something we can try. We'll observe the 
system for now, to establish a new baseline. Then we'll try some of 
these settings and see how it affect things.

Regards,
-- 
Pierre Ossman           Software Development
Cendio AB               https://cendio.com
Teknikringen 8          https://twitter.com/ThinLinc
583 30 Linköping        https://facebook.com/ThinLinc
Phone: +46-13-214600

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