GIT-GC(1) Git Manual GIT-GC(1)
NAME
git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
SYNOPSIS
git gc [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet] [--prune=<date> | --no-prune]
DESCRIPTION
Runs a number of housekeeping tasks within the current repository, such as compressing file revisions (to
reduce disk space and increase performance) and removing unreachable objects which may have been created from
prior invocations of git add.
Users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within each repository to maintain good disk space
utilization and good operating performance.
Some git commands may automatically run git gc; see the --auto flag below for details. If you know what you’re
doing and all you want is to disable this behavior permanently without further considerations, just do:
$ git config --global gc.auto 0
OPTIONS
--aggressive
Usually git gc runs very quickly while providing good disk space utilization and performance. This option
will cause git gc to more aggressively optimize the repository at the expense of taking much more time.
The effects of this optimization are persistent, so this option only needs to be used occasionally; every
few hundred changesets or so.
--auto
With this option, git gc checks whether any housekeeping is required; if not, it exits without performing
any work. Some git commands run git gc --auto after performing operations that could create many loose
objects.
Housekeeping is required if there are too many loose objects or too many packs in the repository. If the
number of loose objects exceeds the value of the gc.auto configuration variable, then all loose objects
are combined into a single pack using git repack -d -l. Setting the value of gc.auto to 0 disables
automatic packing of loose objects.
If the number of packs exceeds the value of gc.autopacklimit, then existing packs (except those marked
with a .keep file) are consolidated into a single pack by using the -A option of git repack. Setting
gc.autopacklimit to 0 disables automatic consolidation of packs.
--prune=<date>
Prune loose objects older than date (default is 2 weeks ago, overridable by the config variable
gc.pruneExpire). This option is on by default.
--no-prune
Do not prune any loose objects.
--quiet
Suppress all progress reports.
CONFIGURATION
The optional configuration variable gc.reflogExpire can be set to indicate how long historical entries within
each branch’s reflog should remain available in this repository. The setting is expressed as a length of time,
for example 90 days or 3 months. It defaults to 90 days.
reflogexpireUnreachable = 3 days
The optional configuration variable gc.rerereresolved indicates how long records of conflicted merge you
resolved earlier are kept. This defaults to 60 days.
The optional configuration variable gc.rerereunresolved indicates how long records of conflicted merge you
have not resolved are kept. This defaults to 15 days.
The optional configuration variable gc.packrefs determines if git gc runs git pack-refs. This can be set to
"notbare" to enable it within all non-bare repos or it can be set to a boolean value. This defaults to true.
The optional configuration variable gc.aggressiveWindow controls how much time is spent optimizing the delta
compression of the objects in the repository when the --aggressive option is specified. The larger the value,
the more time is spent optimizing the delta compression. See the documentation for the --window' option in
git-repack(1) for more details. This defaults to 250.
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".
NOTES
git gc tries very hard to be safe about the garbage it collects. In particular, it will keep not only objects
referenced by your current set of branches and tags, but also objects referenced by the index, remote-tracking
branches, refs saved by git filter-branch in refs/original/, or reflogs (which may reference commits in
branches that were later amended or rewound).
If you are expecting some objects to be collected and they aren’t, check all of those locations and decide
whether it makes sense in your case to remove those references.
HOOKS
The git gc --auto command will run the pre-auto-gc hook. See githooks(5) for more information.
SEE ALSO
git-prune(1) git-reflog(1) git-repack(1) git-rerere(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 1.8.3.1 03/23/2016 GIT-GC(1)
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