Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] gc docs: modernize the advice for manually running "gc"

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2019 23:18:38 +0100

On Mon, Mar 18 2019, Jeff King wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 05:14:59PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>
>> The docs have been recommending that users need to run this manually,
>> but that hasn't been needed in practice for a long time.
>>
>> Let's instead have this reflect reality and say that most users don't
>> need to run this manually at all.
>
> Yeah, I think this makes sense.
>
>> -Users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within
>> -each repository to maintain good disk space utilization and good
>> -operating performance.
>> +Most users should not have to run this command manually. When common
>> +porcelain operations that create objects are run, such as
>> +linkgit:git-commit[1] and linkgit:git-fetch[1], `git gc --auto` will
>> +be run automatically.
>
> This is in the description, before "--auto" is introduced. I wonder if
> it is worth just describing it briefly, like:
>
>   When common porcelain operations that creates objects are run, they
>   will check whether the repository has grown substantially since the
>   last maintenance, and if so run `git gc` automatically.
>
> That gives a first-time reader an idea of whether they need to care
> about this command without having to dig into what "--auto" is.

Yeah I think that's better. Also more briefly describing gc.auto=0
without an example (suggesting people run that, which for most is a bad
idea). I.e. just adding to that "This behavior can be disabled, see
`gc.auto` below."