summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-maintenance.txt54
1 files changed, 54 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-maintenance.txt b/Documentation/git-maintenance.txt
index 6fec1eb8dc..1aa1112418 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-maintenance.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-maintenance.txt
@@ -218,6 +218,60 @@ Further, the `git gc` command should not be combined with
but does not take the lock in the same way as `git maintenance run`. If
possible, use `git maintenance run --task=gc` instead of `git gc`.
+The following sections describe the mechanisms put in place to run
+background maintenance by `git maintenance start` and how to customize
+them.
+
+BACKGROUND MAINTENANCE ON POSIX SYSTEMS
+---------------------------------------
+
+The standard mechanism for scheduling background tasks on POSIX systems
+is cron(8). This tool executes commands based on a given schedule. The
+current list of user-scheduled tasks can be found by running `crontab -l`.
+The schedule written by `git maintenance start` is similar to this:
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+# BEGIN GIT MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE
+# The following schedule was created by Git
+# Any edits made in this region might be
+# replaced in the future by a Git command.
+
+0 1-23 * * * "/<path>/git" --exec-path="/<path>" for-each-repo --config=maintenance.repo maintenance run --schedule=hourly
+0 0 * * 1-6 "/<path>/git" --exec-path="/<path>" for-each-repo --config=maintenance.repo maintenance run --schedule=daily
+0 0 * * 0 "/<path>/git" --exec-path="/<path>" for-each-repo --config=maintenance.repo maintenance run --schedule=weekly
+
+# END GIT MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The comments are used as a region to mark the schedule as written by Git.
+Any modifications within this region will be completely deleted by
+`git maintenance stop` or overwritten by `git maintenance start`.
+
+The `crontab` entry specifies the full path of the `git` executable to
+ensure that the executed `git` command is the same one with which
+`git maintenance start` was issued independent of `PATH`. If the same user
+runs `git maintenance start` with multiple Git executables, then only the
+latest executable is used.
+
+These commands use `git for-each-repo --config=maintenance.repo` to run
+`git maintenance run --schedule=<frequency>` on each repository listed in
+the multi-valued `maintenance.repo` config option. These are typically
+loaded from the user-specific global config. The `git maintenance` process
+then determines which maintenance tasks are configured to run on each
+repository with each `<frequency>` using the `maintenance.<task>.schedule`
+config options. These values are loaded from the global or repository
+config values.
+
+If the config values are insufficient to achieve your desired background
+maintenance schedule, then you can create your own schedule. If you run
+`crontab -e`, then an editor will load with your user-specific `cron`
+schedule. In that editor, you can add your own schedule lines. You could
+start by adapting the default schedule listed earlier, or you could read
+the crontab(5) documentation for advanced scheduling techniques. Please
+do use the full path and `--exec-path` techniques from the default
+schedule to ensure you are executing the correct binaries in your
+schedule.
+
GIT
---