[Savannah-hackers-public] Re: [sr #107505] Please reduce gnash git repo size

[Jim Meyering]

Sylvain Beucler wrote:
> Jim,
>
> Can you have a look at this?
>
> The gnash repo can be packed from 760M (gc) to 60M (gc --aggressive).

Nice! (in a way ;-)

> Does that sound normal?  Is there a risk to lose data with it?

It is to be expected, if no one has ever run
"git gc --aggressive" or an equivalent on this repository before.

> If not, should we plan to do it on other repo too?

Yes, I think so.  "git gc" documentation suggests to run it
"every few hundred change-sets or so".

> On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 08:14:03PM +0000, Sylvain Beucler wrote:
>>
>> Follow-up Comment #2, sr #107505 (project administration):
>>
>> Wow, it's down to 60M after 20mn.
>> I'll check with Jim to have an opinion on doing it on the real repo.

As far as I know, there is no risk of data loss.
I think of "git gc" as coalescing into a new "pack" any free objects,
and compressing that resulting new pack.
On the other hand, with --aggressive, it examines all objects
(including those in previously coalesced packs) and does a global
search for common/compressible things.

Thus, if you have many separately-packed changes that would have
been better compressed if they'd ended up in the same pack,
--aggressive will yield significant benefit.