How can I trigger garbage collection on a Git remote repository?

git repository git-gc
peterwang picture peterwang · Jul 2, 2010 · Viewed 37.6k times · Source

As we know, we can periodically run git gc to pack objects under .git/objects.

In the case of a remote central Git repository (bare or not), though, after many pushes, there many files under myproj.git/objects; each commit seems to create a new file there.

How can I pack that many files? (I mean the ones on the remote central bare repository, not on local clone repository.)

Answer

Neil Mayhew picture Neil Mayhew · Jul 2, 2010

The remote repo should be configured to run gc as needed after a commit is made. See the documentation of gc.auto in git-gc and git-config man pages.

However, a remote repo shouldn't need all that much garbage collection, since it will rarely have dangling (unreachable) commits. These usually result from things like branch deletion and rebasing, which typically happen only in local repos.

So gc is needed more for repacking, which is for saving storage space rather than removing actual garbage. The gc.auto variable is sufficient for taking care of this.

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