The documentation for the --aggressive flag was misleading, hinting that
running git gc with --aggressive is a good thing. However, --aggressive only
really makes sense if you have a bad pack file, such as from git-fast-import.
---
I keep seeing people regularly packing their repo with git gc --aggressive.
However, in my experience, this seldom results in a smaller repository. This
can be because the repository was repacked tightly previously (for example,
with a high --window value) or because incremental "git gc" just makes better
packs anyway. Throwing away that information is often not a good idea.
The documentation for the --aggressive flag was misleading, in that it hints that you'll get a smaller pack, which is often not the case.
Documentation/git-gc.txt | 8 +++++---
1 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/git-gc.txt b/Documentation/git-gc.txt
index b6b5ce1..ebf972c 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-gc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-gc.txt
@@ -36,9 +36,11 @@ OPTIONS
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.
+ of taking much more time. Note that this will throw away all previous
+ optimizations. As a result, running git gc with --aggressive will not
+ necessarily create a smaller pack file, especially when the repository was
+ packed tightly already. Using --aggressive only makes sense if you have a
+ badly packed repository, such as created by git-fast-import.
--auto::
With this option, `git gc` checks whether any housekeeping is
--
1.5.5.1.174.g32fa0.dirty
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