GIT-GC(1) Git Manual GIT-GC(1)NAMEgit-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
SYNOPSISgit-gc [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet]
DESCRIPTION
Runs a number of housekeeping tasks within the current repository, such
as compressing file revisions (to reduce disk space and increase
performance) and removing unreachable objects which may have been
created from prior invocations of git-add(1).
Users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within each
repository to maintain good disk space utilization and good operating
performance.
Some git commands may automatically run git-gc; see the --auto flag
below for details. If you know what you're doing and all you want is to
disable this behavior permanently without further considerations, just
do:
$ git config --global gc.auto 0
OPTIONS--aggressive
Usually git-gc runs very quickly while providing good disk space
utilization and performance. This option will cause git-gc to
more aggressively optimize the repository at the expense of
taking much more time. The effects of this optimization are
persistent, so this option only needs to be used occasionally;
every few hundred changesets or so.
--auto With this option, git gc checks whether any housekeeping is
required; if not, it exits without performing any work. Some git
commands run git gc --auto after performing operations that
could create many loose objects.
Housekeeping is required if there are too many loose objects or
too many packs in the repository. If the number of loose objects
exceeds the value of the gc.auto configuration variable, then
all loose objects are combined into a single pack using
git-repack -d -l. Setting the value of gc.auto to 0 disables
automatic packing of loose objects.
If the number of packs exceeds the value of gc.autopacklimit,
then existing packs (except those marked with a .keep file) are
consolidated into a single pack by using the -A option of
git-repack. Setting gc.autopacklimit to 0 disables automatic
consolidation of packs.
--quiet
Suppress all progress reports.
CONFIGURATION
The optional configuration variable gc.reflogExpire can be set to
indicate how long historical entries within each branch's reflog should
remain available in this repository. The setting is expressed as a
length of time, for example 90 days or 3 months. It defaults to 90
days.
The optional configuration variable gc.reflogExpireUnreachable can be
set to indicate how long historical reflog entries which are not part
of the current branch should remain available in this repository. These
types of entries are generally created as a result of using git commit
--amend or git rebase and are the commits prior to the amend or rebase
occurring. Since these changes are not part of the current project most
users will want to expire them sooner. This option defaults to 30 days.
The optional configuration variable gc.rerereresolved indicates how
long records of conflicted merge you resolved earlier are kept. This
defaults to 60 days.
The optional configuration variable gc.rerereunresolved indicates how
long records of conflicted merge you have not resolved are kept. This
defaults to 15 days.
The optional configuration variable gc.packrefs determines if git gc
runs git-pack-refs. This can be set to "nobare" to enable it within all
non-bare repos or it can be set to a boolean value. This defaults to
true.
The optional configuration variable gc.aggressiveWindow controls how
much time is spent optimizing the delta compression of the objects in
the repository when the --aggressive option is specified. The larger
the value, the more time is spent optimizing the delta compression. See
the documentation for the --window' option in git-repack(1) for more
details. This defaults to 10.
The optional configuration variable gc.pruneExpire controls how old the
unreferenced loose objects have to be before they are pruned. The
default is "2 weeks ago".
NOTESgit-gc tries very hard to be safe about the garbage it collects. In
particular, it will keep not only objects referenced by your current
set of branches and tags, but also objects referenced by the index,
remote tracking branches, refs saved by git-filter-branch(1) in
refs/original/, or reflogs (which may references commits in branches
that were later amended or rewound).
If you are expecting some objects to be collected and they aren't,
check all of those locations and decide whether it makes sense in your
case to remove those references.
SEE ALSOgit-prune(1)git-reflog(1)git-repack(1)git-rerere(1)AUTHOR
Written by Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
GIT
Part of the git(7) suite
Git 1.5.5.2 10/21/2008 GIT-GC(1)