diff options
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt | 41 |
1 files changed, 41 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt b/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt index 1fbbbb4025..7ffe03f427 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt @@ -339,6 +339,47 @@ git filter-branch --index-filter \ --------------------------------------------------------------- + +Checklist for Shrinking a Repository +------------------------------------ + +git-filter-branch is often used to get rid of a subset of files, +usually with some combination of `\--index-filter` and +`\--subdirectory-filter`. People expect the resulting repository to +be smaller than the original, but you need a few more steps to +actually make it smaller, because git tries hard not to lose your +objects until you tell it to. First make sure that: + +* You really removed all variants of a filename, if a blob was moved + over its lifetime. `git log \--name-only \--follow \--all \-- + filename` can help you find renames. + +* You really filtered all refs: use `\--tag-name-filter cat \-- + \--all` when calling git-filter-branch. + +Then there are two ways to get a smaller repository. A safer way is +to clone, that keeps your original intact. + +* Clone it with `git clone +++file:///path/to/repo+++`. The clone + will not have the removed objects. See linkgit:git-clone[1]. (Note + that cloning with a plain path just hardlinks everything!) + +If you really don't want to clone it, for whatever reasons, check the +following points instead (in this order). This is a very destructive +approach, so *make a backup* or go back to cloning it. You have been +warned. + +* Remove the original refs backed up by git-filter-branch: say `git + for-each-ref \--format="%(refname)" refs/original/ | xargs -n 1 git + update-ref -d`. + +* Expire all reflogs with `git reflog expire \--expire=now \--all`. + +* Garbage collect all unreferenced objects with `git gc \--prune=now` + (or if your git-gc is not new enough to support arguments to + `\--prune`, use `git repack -ad; git prune` instead). + + Author ------ Written by Petr "Pasky" Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>, |