git-gc(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | AGGRESSIVE | CONFIGURATION | NOTES | HOOKS | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-GC(1)                      Git Manual                      GIT-GC(1)

NAME         top

       git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local
       repository

SYNOPSIS         top

       git gc [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet] [--prune=<date> | --no-prune] [--force] [--keep-largest-pack]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Runs a number of housekeeping tasks within the current
       repository, such as compressing file revisions (to reduce disk
       space and increase performance), removing unreachable objects
       which may have been created from prior invocations of git add,
       packing refs, pruning reflog, rerere metadata or stale working
       trees. May also update ancillary indexes such as the
       commit-graph.

       When common porcelain operations that create objects are run,
       they will check whether the repository has grown substantially
       since the last maintenance, and if so run git gc automatically.
       See gc.auto below for how to disable this behavior.

       Running git gc manually should only be needed when adding objects
       to a repository without regularly running such porcelain
       commands, to do a one-off repository optimization, or e.g. to
       clean up a suboptimal mass-import. See the "PACKFILE
       OPTIMIZATION" section in git-fast-import(1) for more details on
       the import case.

OPTIONS         top

       --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 mostly persistent. See the "AGGRESSIVE"
           section below for details.

       --auto
           With this option, git gc checks whether any housekeeping is
           required; if not, it exits without performing any work.

           See the gc.auto option in the "CONFIGURATION" section below
           for how this heuristic works.

           Once housekeeping is triggered by exceeding the limits of
           configuration options such as gc.auto and gc.autoPackLimit,
           all other housekeeping tasks (e.g. rerere, working trees,
           reflog...) will be performed as well.

       --[no-]cruft
           When expiring unreachable objects, pack them separately into
           a cruft pack instead of storing them as loose objects.
           --cruft is on by default.

       --max-cruft-size=<n>
           When packing unreachable objects into a cruft pack, limit the
           size of new cruft packs to be at most <n> bytes. Overrides
           any value specified via the gc.maxCruftSize configuration.
           See the --max-cruft-size option of git-repack(1) for more.

       --prune=<date>
           Prune loose objects older than date (default is 2 weeks ago,
           overridable by the config variable gc.pruneExpire).
           --prune=now prunes loose objects regardless of their age and
           increases the risk of corruption if another process is
           writing to the repository concurrently; see "NOTES" below.
           --prune is on by default.

       --no-prune
           Do not prune any loose objects.

       --quiet
           Suppress all progress reports.

       --force
           Force git gc to run even if there may be another git gc
           instance running on this repository.

       --keep-largest-pack
           All packs except the largest non-cruft pack, any packs marked
           with a .keep file, and any cruft pack(s) are consolidated
           into a single pack. When this option is used,
           gc.bigPackThreshold is ignored.

AGGRESSIVE         top

       When the --aggressive option is supplied, git-repack(1) will be
       invoked with the -f flag, which in turn will pass
       --no-reuse-delta to git-pack-objects(1). This will throw away any
       existing deltas and re-compute them, at the expense of spending
       much more time on the repacking.

       The effects of this are mostly persistent, e.g. when packs and
       loose objects are coalesced into one another pack the existing
       deltas in that pack might get re-used, but there are also various
       cases where we might pick a sub-optimal delta from a newer pack
       instead.

       Furthermore, supplying --aggressive will tweak the --depth and
       --window options passed to git-repack(1). See the
       gc.aggressiveDepth and gc.aggressiveWindow settings below. By
       using a larger window size we’re more likely to find more optimal
       deltas.

       It’s probably not worth it to use this option on a given
       repository without running tailored performance benchmarks on it.
       It takes a lot more time, and the resulting space/delta
       optimization may or may not be worth it. Not using this at all is
       the right trade-off for most users and their repositories.

CONFIGURATION         top

       Everything below this line in this section is selectively
       included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the
       same as what’s found there:

       gc.aggressiveDepth
           The depth parameter used in the delta compression algorithm
           used by git gc --aggressive. This defaults to 50, which is
           the default for the --depth option when --aggressive isn’t in
           use.

           See the documentation for the --depth option in git-repack(1)
           for more details.

       gc.aggressiveWindow
           The window size parameter used in the delta compression
           algorithm used by git gc --aggressive. This defaults to 250,
           which is a much more aggressive window size than the default
           --window of 10.

           See the documentation for the --window option in
           git-repack(1) for more details.

       gc.auto
           When there are approximately more than this many loose
           objects in the repository, git gc --auto will pack them. Some
           Porcelain commands use this command to perform a light-weight
           garbage collection from time to time. The default value is
           6700.

           Setting this to 0 disables not only automatic packing based
           on the number of loose objects, but also any other heuristic
           git gc --auto will otherwise use to determine if there’s work
           to do, such as gc.autoPackLimit.

       gc.autoPackLimit
           When there are more than this many packs that are not marked
           with *.keep file in the repository, git gc --auto
           consolidates them into one larger pack. The default value is
           50. Setting this to 0 disables it. Setting gc.auto to 0 will
           also disable this.

           See the gc.bigPackThreshold configuration variable below.
           When in use, it’ll affect how the auto pack limit works.

       gc.autoDetach
           Make git gc --auto return immediately and run in the
           background if the system supports it. Default is true.

       gc.bigPackThreshold
           If non-zero, all non-cruft packs larger than this limit are
           kept when git gc is run. This is very similar to
           --keep-largest-pack except that all non-cruft packs that meet
           the threshold are kept, not just the largest pack. Defaults
           to zero. Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g are supported.

           Note that if the number of kept packs is more than
           gc.autoPackLimit, this configuration variable is ignored, all
           packs except the base pack will be repacked. After this the
           number of packs should go below gc.autoPackLimit and
           gc.bigPackThreshold should be respected again.

           If the amount of memory estimated for git repack to run
           smoothly is not available and gc.bigPackThreshold is not set,
           the largest pack will also be excluded (this is the
           equivalent of running git gc with --keep-largest-pack).

       gc.writeCommitGraph
           If true, then gc will rewrite the commit-graph file when
           git-gc(1) is run. When using git gc --auto the commit-graph
           will be updated if housekeeping is required. Default is true.
           See git-commit-graph(1) for details.

       gc.logExpiry
           If the file gc.log exists, then git gc --auto will print its
           content and exit with status zero instead of running unless
           that file is more than gc.logExpiry old. Default is "1.day".
           See gc.pruneExpire for more ways to specify its value.

       gc.packRefs
           Running git pack-refs in a repository renders it unclonable
           by Git versions prior to 1.5.1.2 over dumb transports such as
           HTTP. This variable determines whether git gc runs git
           pack-refs. This can be set to notbare to enable it within all
           non-bare repos or it can be set to a boolean value. The
           default is true.

       gc.cruftPacks
           Store unreachable objects in a cruft pack (see git-repack(1))
           instead of as loose objects. The default is true.

       gc.maxCruftSize
           Limit the size of new cruft packs when repacking. When
           specified in addition to --max-cruft-size, the command line
           option takes priority. See the --max-cruft-size option of
           git-repack(1).

       gc.pruneExpire
           When git gc is run, it will call prune --expire 2.weeks.ago
           (and repack --cruft --cruft-expiration 2.weeks.ago if using
           cruft packs via gc.cruftPacks or --cruft). Override the grace
           period with this config variable. The value "now" may be used
           to disable this grace period and always prune unreachable
           objects immediately, or "never" may be used to suppress
           pruning. This feature helps prevent corruption when git gc
           runs concurrently with another process writing to the
           repository; see the "NOTES" section of git-gc(1).

       gc.worktreePruneExpire
           When git gc is run, it calls git worktree prune --expire
           3.months.ago. This config variable can be used to set a
           different grace period. The value "now" may be used to
           disable the grace period and prune $GIT_DIR/worktrees
           immediately, or "never" may be used to suppress pruning.

       gc.reflogExpire, gc.<pattern>.reflogExpire
           git reflog expire removes reflog entries older than this
           time; defaults to 90 days. The value "now" expires all
           entries immediately, and "never" suppresses expiration
           altogether. With "<pattern>" (e.g. "refs/stash") in the
           middle the setting applies only to the refs that match the
           <pattern>.

       gc.reflogExpireUnreachable, gc.<pattern>.reflogExpireUnreachable
           git reflog expire removes reflog entries older than this time
           and are not reachable from the current tip; defaults to 30
           days. The value "now" expires all entries immediately, and
           "never" suppresses expiration altogether. With "<pattern>"
           (e.g. "refs/stash") in the middle, the setting applies only
           to the refs that match the <pattern>.

           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, which is why the default is more
           aggressive than gc.reflogExpire.

       gc.recentObjectsHook
           When considering whether or not to remove an object (either
           when generating a cruft pack or storing unreachable objects
           as loose), use the shell to execute the specified command(s).
           Interpret their output as object IDs which Git will consider
           as "recent", regardless of their age. By treating their
           mtimes as "now", any objects (and their descendants)
           mentioned in the output will be kept regardless of their true
           age.

           Output must contain exactly one hex object ID per line, and
           nothing else. Objects which cannot be found in the repository
           are ignored. Multiple hooks are supported, but all must exit
           successfully, else the operation (either generating a cruft
           pack or unpacking unreachable objects) will be halted.

       gc.repackFilter
           When repacking, use the specified filter to move certain
           objects into a separate packfile. See the
           --filter=<filter-spec> option of git-repack(1).

       gc.repackFilterTo
           When repacking and using a filter, see gc.repackFilter, the
           specified location will be used to create the packfile
           containing the filtered out objects.  WARNING: The specified
           location should be accessible, using for example the Git
           alternates mechanism, otherwise the repo could be considered
           corrupt by Git as it migh not be able to access the objects
           in that packfile. See the --filter-to=<dir> option of
           git-repack(1) and the objects/info/alternates section of
           gitrepository-layout(5).

       gc.rerereResolved
           Records of conflicted merge you resolved earlier are kept for
           this many days when git rerere gc is run. You can also use
           more human-readable "1.month.ago", etc. The default is 60
           days. See git-rerere(1).

       gc.rerereUnresolved
           Records of conflicted merge you have not resolved are kept
           for this many days when git rerere gc is run. You can also
           use more human-readable "1.month.ago", etc. The default is 15
           days. See git-rerere(1).

NOTES         top

       git gc tries very hard not to delete objects that are referenced
       anywhere in your repository. 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,
       reflogs (which may reference commits in branches that were later
       amended or rewound), and anything else in the refs/* namespace.
       Note that a note (of the kind created by git notes) attached to
       an object does not contribute in keeping the object alive. If you
       are expecting some objects to be deleted and they aren’t, check
       all of those locations and decide whether it makes sense in your
       case to remove those references.

       On the other hand, when git gc runs concurrently with another
       process, there is a risk of it deleting an object that the other
       process is using but hasn’t created a reference to. This may just
       cause the other process to fail or may corrupt the repository if
       the other process later adds a reference to the deleted object.
       Git has two features that significantly mitigate this problem:

        1. Any object with modification time newer than the --prune date
           is kept, along with everything reachable from it.

        2. Most operations that add an object to the database update the
           modification time of the object if it is already present so
           that #1 applies.

       However, these features fall short of a complete solution, so
       users who run commands concurrently have to live with some risk
       of corruption (which seems to be low in practice).

HOOKS         top

       The git gc --auto command will run the pre-auto-gc hook. See
       githooks(5) for more information.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-prune(1) git-reflog(1) git-repack(1) git-rerere(1)

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                      GIT-GC(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)git-fast-import(1)git-fetch(1)git-gc(1)git-maintenance(1)git-p4(1)git-pack-objects(1)git-prune(1)git-reflog(1)git-repack(1)gitformat-pack(5)githooks(5)gitrepository-layout(5)gitnamespaces(7)