gc: call "prune --expire 2.weeks.ago" by default

The only reason we did not call "prune" in git-gc was that it is an
inherently dangerous operation: if there is a commit going on, you will
prune loose objects that were just created, and are, in fact, needed by the
commit object just about to be created.

Since it is dangerous, we told users so.  That led to many users not even
daring to run it when it was actually safe. Besides, they are users, and
should not have to remember such details as when to call git-gc with
--prune, or to call git-prune directly.

Of course, the consequence was that "git gc --auto" gets triggered much
more often than we would like, since unreferenced loose objects (such as
left-overs from a rebase or a reset --hard) were never pruned.

Alas, git-prune recently learnt the option --expire <minimum-age>, which
makes it a much safer operation.  This allows us to call prune from git-gc,
with a grace period of 2 weeks for the unreferenced loose objects (this
value was determined in a discussion on the git list as a safe one).

If you want to override this grace period, just set the config variable
gc.pruneExpire to a different value; an example would be

	[gc]
		pruneExpire = 6.months.ago

or even "never", if you feel really paranoid.

Note that this new behaviour makes "--prune" be a no-op.

While adding a test to t5304-prune.sh (since it really tests the implicit
call to "prune"), also the original test for "prune --expire" was moved
there from t1410-reflog.sh, where it did not belong.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/builtin-gc.c b/builtin-gc.c
index 045bf0e487..95917d74a8 100644
--- a/builtin-gc.c
+++ b/builtin-gc.c
@@ -26,12 +26,13 @@ static int pack_refs = 1;
 static int aggressive_window = -1;
 static int gc_auto_threshold = 6700;
 static int gc_auto_pack_limit = 20;
+static char *prune_expire = "2.weeks.ago";
 
 #define MAX_ADD 10
 static const char *argv_pack_refs[] = {"pack-refs", "--all", "--prune", NULL};
 static const char *argv_reflog[] = {"reflog", "expire", "--all", NULL};
 static const char *argv_repack[MAX_ADD] = {"repack", "-d", "-l", NULL};
-static const char *argv_prune[] = {"prune", NULL};
+static const char *argv_prune[] = {"prune", "--expire", NULL, NULL};
 static const char *argv_rerere[] = {"rerere", "gc", NULL};
 
 static int gc_config(const char *var, const char *value)
@@ -55,6 +56,17 @@ static int gc_config(const char *var, const char *value)
 		gc_auto_pack_limit = git_config_int(var, value);
 		return 0;
 	}
+	if (!strcmp(var, "gc.pruneexpire")) {
+		if (!value)
+			return config_error_nonbool(var);
+		if (strcmp(value, "now")) {
+			unsigned long now = approxidate("now");
+			if (approxidate(value) >= now)
+				return error("Invalid %s: '%s'", var, value);
+		}
+		prune_expire = xstrdup(value);
+		return 0;
+	}
 	return git_default_config(var, value);
 }
 
@@ -234,7 +246,8 @@ int cmd_gc(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 	if (run_command_v_opt(argv_repack, RUN_GIT_CMD))
 		return error(FAILED_RUN, argv_repack[0]);
 
-	if (prune && run_command_v_opt(argv_prune, RUN_GIT_CMD))
+	argv_prune[2] = prune_expire;
+	if (run_command_v_opt(argv_prune, RUN_GIT_CMD))
 		return error(FAILED_RUN, argv_prune[0]);
 
 	if (run_command_v_opt(argv_rerere, RUN_GIT_CMD))