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I have a commit id available in the bare repo.
git show commit id, shows the commit with the changes.

But the same commit doesn't show up when using the below commands

git branch --contains <commit id>

or

git reflog show --all | grep <commit id>

What could have happened to the commit id?

CharlesB
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Senthil A Kumar
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3 Answers3

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It is possible to create a branch, commit to it then force-delete it with git branch -D. In this case commits are lost in such way. Reflog shows logs of existing refs.

Also, your commands don't check reflog of the HEAD. Try git reflog show HEAD, it could contain the commit (e.g. if it has been made into detached head) if it's not garbage collected yet.

kan
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(Sorry for my previous answer, completely off topic).

git reflog will not go by each commit if you git pull or git clone on a remote, so maybe this commit comes from one of these operations.

Also, I imagine you checked that commit is less than 90 days old, although it might have been gced otherwise with default gc settings.

jolivier
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  • Thanks jolivier, but if the branch is deleted or sha1 id got changed, this should be available in the reflog for 90 days, which i don't see. Or is there a way to find out which branch got deleted or which sha1 got replaced? – Senthil A Kumar Aug 28 '12 at 18:26
  • Am checking this in the bare repo and this commit was done 2 days back. The commit was applied to clone by doing a cherry-pick from Gerrit codereview and then pushed back to bare repo on a particular branch. But now the commit id not available on that branch and am sure the branch wasn't deleted. Also no info on "git reflog" – Senthil A Kumar Aug 28 '12 at 18:36
  • One possible cause might be someone else has altered the branch by rebasing or something else and pushed the new branch to orgin by force, and you pulled this branch by force without konwing the change. This will cuase the commit id not show in the branch or your reflog, but they should be in your unreachable objects list if you did not prune them already. – weynhamz Aug 28 '12 at 18:48
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These commits are called dangling commits, I believe git fsck will show them. They are still existed in the git repository until git gc or git prune runs. Generally, git gc will automatically run when there are too many loosing objects in the repo which will be packed them into a pack file. git gc operation will also remove the danling commits before a certain time. git gc --prune=now and git prune --expire=now will remove these commits immediatly. git config --global gc.auto 0 will disable automatical gc running.

weynhamz
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  • Thanks Zheng, i have the gc disabled already so if this is a dangling commit it should be there. Am running "git fsck --unreachable | grep 98d0d" ... let me see if i can find any – Senthil A Kumar Aug 28 '12 at 18:41
  • i couldn'd see the commit id in the fsck --unreachable... this is weird. The commit is not showing up in reflog, fsck, fsck --unreachable, branches but shows up in "git show ". Any other suggestions to find it out? – Senthil A Kumar Aug 28 '12 at 20:06