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>

2 files changed, 9 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index 35824258ca..bfad0e3858 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -590,6 +590,10 @@ gc.packrefs::
 	at some stage, and setting this to `false` will continue to
 	prevent `git pack-refs` from being run from `git gc`.
 
+gc.pruneexpire::
+	When `git gc` is run, it will call `prune --expire 2.weeks.ago`.
+	Override the grace period with this config variable.
+
 gc.reflogexpire::
 	`git reflog expire` removes reflog entries older than
 	this time; defaults to 90 days.
diff --git a/Documentation/git-gc.txt b/Documentation/git-gc.txt
index 2e7be916aa..229a7c9b30 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-gc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-gc.txt
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
 
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
-'git-gc' [--prune] [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet]
+'git-gc' [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet]
 
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
@@ -25,17 +25,6 @@ operating performance. Some git commands may automatically run
 OPTIONS
 -------
 
---prune::
-	Usually `git-gc` packs refs, expires old reflog entries,
-	packs loose objects,
-	and removes old 'rerere' records.  Removal
-	of unreferenced loose objects is an unsafe operation
-	while other git operations are in progress, so it is not
-	done by default.  Pass this option if you want it, and only
-	when you know nobody else is creating new objects in the
-	repository at the same time (e.g. never use this option
-	in a cron script).
-
 --aggressive::
 	Usually 'git-gc' runs very quickly while providing good disk
 	space utilization and performance.  This option will cause
@@ -104,6 +93,10 @@ the value, the more time is spent optimizing the delta compression.  See
 the documentation for the --window' option in linkgit:git-repack[1] for
 more details.  This defaults to 10.
 
+The optional configuration variable 'gc.pruneExpire' controls how old
+the unreferenced loose objects have to be before they are pruned.  The
+default is "2 weeks ago".
+
 See Also
 --------
 linkgit:git-prune[1]