Setting variables on git remote repository - git gc doesn't run automatically

Question

It seems that git refuse to do gc command automatically on my remote repository. In about one month that repository enlarge to about 6GB because of .pack files. I think that is problem with variable gc.auto - how can I set this variable on remote repsoitory, or how can I run git-gc command by hand on that repository?

Answer 1

You'll have to log in on the box where your remote repo is hosted and then simply type

git gc

on the command line.

Regarding gc.auto: the docs say:

gc.auto
When there are approximately more than this many loose objects in the repository, git gc --auto will pack them. Some Porcelain commands use this command to perform a light-weight garbage collection from time to time. The default value is 6700. Setting this to 0 disables it.

However, you are talking about .pack files. Seems like there's another option dealing with that:

gc.autopacklimit
When there are more than this many packs that are not marked with *.keep file in the repository, git gc --auto consolidates them into one larger pack. The default value is 50. Setting this to 0 disables it.

Note that gc.autopacklimit works on the number of packs, not their sizes. Maybe you could tweak the gc behavior using these...

Answer 2

Note: if your repo has only one pack file, a git gc should not repack on git config gc.autoPackLimit 1. Yet it did.
That is, it did until Git 2.10 (Q3 2016).

See commit 5f4e3bf (25 Jun 2016) by Eric Wong (ele828).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 97865e8, 13 Jul 2016)}

gc: fix off-by-one error with gc.autoPackLimit

This matches the documentation and allows gc.autoPackLimit=1 to maintain a single pack without attempting a repack on every "git gc --auto" invocation.

"gc.autoPackLimit" when set to 1 should not trigger a repacking when there is only one pack, but the code counted poorly and did so.