Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/4] Fix prune/gc problem with multiple worktrees

From: Michael Haggerty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 13:26:55 +0200

On 06/02/2016 11:53 AM, Duy Nguyen wrote:
> (from patch 4/4 mail)
> 
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:51 PM, Michael Haggerty <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> +     path = xstrdup(worktree_git_path(wt, "logs/refs/bisect"));
>>> +     if (file_exists(path))
>>> +             handle_one_reflog(path, NULL, 0, &cb);
>>> +     free(path);
>>> +}
>>
>> `refs/bisect` is not a single reference. It is a namespace that contains
>> references with names like `refs/bisect/bad` and
>> `refs/bisect/good-66106691a1b71e445fe5e4d6b8b043dffc7dfe4c`.
> 
> Yeah I missed that. I'm not going to write another directory walker to
> collect all logs/refs/bisect/*. I didn't add pending objects for
> refs/bisect/* of other worktrees either. At that point waiting for the
> new ref iterator makes more sense...
> 
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 11:06 PM, Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  <[email-masked]> writes:
>>
>>> This series makes sure that objects referenced by all worktrees are
>>> marked reachable so that we don't accidentally delete objects that are
>>> being used. Previously per-worktree references in index, detached HEAD
>>> or per-worktree reflogs come from current worktree only, not all
>>> worktrees.
>>
>> I'll let this topic simmer on the list for now, instead of picking
>> it up immediately to 'pu', as Michael in $gmane/296068 makes me
>> wonder if we want to keep piling on the current "worktree ref
>> iterations are bolted on" or if we want to first clean it up, whose
>> natural fallout hopefully would eliminate the bug away.
> 
> So what should be the way forward? My intention was having something
> that can fix the problem for now, even if a bit hacky while waiting
> for ref iterator to be ready, then convert to use it and clean things
> up, because I don't how long ref-iterator would take and losing data
> is serous enough that I'd like to fix it soon. If we go with "fix soon
> then convert to ref-iterator later", then I will drop the
> logs/bisect/* check, checking logs/HEAD alone should be good enough.
> Otherwise I'll prepare a series on top of ref-iterator.

Fixing reachability via the index and detached HEADs feels relatively
important.

Fixing refs/bisect/* feels a bit less urgent, because (1) usually
bisections don't take very long, and (2) if the commits that one is
bisecting are not otherwise reachable anymore, then the bisection is
probably not interesting anymore. However, these are real references, so
if they get broken, the worktree will be seen as corrupt and recovery is
not super obvious (I guess most people would end up deleting the whole
worktree).

Fixing the reflogs for HEAD and (especially) refs/bisect/* in worktrees
feels even less important, because reflogs are not nearly as important
as current ref values, Git is relatively tolerant of broken reflog
entries, and there are easy ways to prune them if breakage occurs.

It's hard for me to predict when the ref-iterator stuff will be merged.
It is a big change, but so far the feedback seems pretty good. I can
tell you that pushing it and ref-stores forward is high on my priority list.

Michael