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-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt41
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>,