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diff --git a/Documentation/howto/dangling-objects.txt b/Documentation/howto/dangling-objects.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e82ddae3cf..0000000000 --- a/Documentation/howto/dangling-objects.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,109 +0,0 @@ -From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> -Subject: Re: Question about fsck-objects output -Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:01:06 -0800 (PST) -Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0701251144290.25027@woody.linux-foundation.org> -Archived-At: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/37754> -Abstract: Linus describes what dangling objects are, when they - are left behind, and how to view their relationship with branch - heads in gitk - -On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Larry Streepy wrote: - -> Sorry to ask such a basic question, but I can't quite decipher the output of -> fsck-objects. When I run it, I get this: -> -> git fsck-objects -> dangling commit 2213f6d4dd39ca8baebd0427723723e63208521b -> dangling commit f0d4e00196bd5ee54463e9ea7a0f0e8303da767f -> dangling blob 6a6d0b01b3e96d49a8f2c7addd4ef8c3bd1f5761 -> -> -> Even after a "repack -a -d" they still exist. The man page has a short -> explanation, but, at least for me, it wasn't fully enlightening. :-) -> -> The man page says that dangling commits could be "root" commits, but since my -> repo started as a clone of another repo, I don't see how I could have any root -> commits. Also, the page doesn't really describe what a dangling blob is. -> -> So, can someone explain what these artifacts are and if they are a problem -> that I should be worried about? - -The most common situation is that you've rebased a branch (or you have -pulled from somebody else who rebased a branch, like the "pu" branch in -the git.git archive itself). - -What happens is that the old head of the original branch still exists, as -does obviously everything it pointed to. The branch pointer itself just -doesn't, since you replaced it with another one. - -However, there are certainly other situations too that cause dangling -objects. For example, the "dangling blob" situation you have tends to be -because you did a "git add" of a file, but then, before you actually -committed it and made it part of the bigger picture, you changed something -else in that file and committed that *updated* thing - the old state that -you added originally ends up not being pointed to by any commit/tree, so -it's now a dangling blob object. - -Similarly, when the "recursive" merge strategy runs, and finds that there -are criss-cross merges and thus more than one merge base (which is fairly -unusual, but it does happen), it will generate one temporary midway tree -(or possibly even more, if you had lots of criss-crossing merges and -more than two merge bases) as a temporary internal merge base, and again, -those are real objects, but the end result will not end up pointing to -them, so they end up "dangling" in your repository. - -Generally, dangling objects aren't anything to worry about. They can even -be very useful: if you screw something up, the dangling objects can be how -you recover your old tree (say, you did a rebase, and realized that you -really didn't want to - you can look at what dangling objects you have, -and decide to reset your head to some old dangling state). - -For commits, the most useful thing to do with dangling objects tends to be -to do a simple - - gitk <dangling-commit-sha-goes-here> --not --all - -which means exactly what it sounds like: it says that you want to see the -commit history that is described by the dangling commit(s), but you do NOT -want to see the history that is described by all your branches and tags -(which are the things you normally reach). That basically shows you in a -nice way what the danglign commit was (and notice that it might not be -just one commit: we only report the "tip of the line" as being dangling, -but there might be a whole deep and complex commit history that has gotten -dropped - rebasing will do that). - -For blobs and trees, you can't do the same, but you can examine them. You -can just do - - git show <dangling-blob/tree-sha-goes-here> - -to show what the contents of the blob were (or, for a tree, basically what -the "ls" for that directory was), and that may give you some idea of what -the operation was that left that dangling object. - -Usually, dangling blobs and trees aren't very interesting. They're almost -always the result of either being a half-way mergebase (the blob will -often even have the conflict markers from a merge in it, if you have had -conflicting merges that you fixed up by hand), or simply because you -interrupted a "git fetch" with ^C or something like that, leaving _some_ -of the new objects in the object database, but just dangling and useless. - -Anyway, once you are sure that you're not interested in any dangling -state, you can just prune all unreachable objects: - - git prune - -and they'll be gone. But you should only run "git prune" on a quiescent -repository - it's kind of like doing a filesystem fsck recovery: you don't -want to do that while the filesystem is mounted. - -(The same is true of "git-fsck-objects" itself, btw - but since -git-fsck-objects never actually *changes* the repository, it just reports -on what it found, git-fsck-objects itself is never "dangerous" to run. -Running it while somebody is actually changing the repository can cause -confusing and scary messages, but it won't actually do anything bad. In -contrast, running "git prune" while somebody is actively changing the -repository is a *BAD* idea). - - Linus - |