Re: [PATCH 00/21] Maintenance builtin, allowing 'gc --auto' customization

[Son Luong Ngoc <sluongng@gmail.com>]

> On Jul 10, 2020, at 20:46, Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@google.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jul 09, 2020 at 07:45:47PM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
>> 
>> On 7/9/2020 7:16 PM, Jeff King wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jul 09, 2020 at 08:43:48AM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
>>> 
>>>>>> Is it infeasible to ask for 'git maintenance' to learn something like
>>>>>> '--on /<path-to-repo> --on /<path-to-second-repo>'? Or better yet, some
>>>>>> config like "maintenance.targetRepo = /<path-to-repo>"?
>>>> 
>>>> Sorry that I missed this comment on my first reply.
>>>> 
>>>> The intention is that this cron entry will be simpler after I follow up
>>>> with the "background" part of maintenance. The idea is to use global
>>>> or system config to register a list of repositories that want background
>>>> maintenance and have cron execute something like "git maintenance run --all-repos"
>>>> to span "git -C <repo> maintenance run --scheduled" for all repos in
>>>> the config.
>>>> 
>>>> For now, this manual setup does end up a bit cluttered if you have a
>>>> lot of repos to maintain.
>>> 
>>> I think it might be useful to have a general command to run a subcommand
>>> in a bunch of repositories. Something like:
>>> 
>>>  git for-each-repo --recurse /path/to/repos git maintenance ...
>>> 
>>> which would root around in /path/to/repos for any git-dirs and run "git
>>> --git-dir=$GIT_DIR maintenance ..." on each of them.
>>> 
>>> And/or:
>>> 
>>>  git for-each-repo --config maintenance.repos git maintenance ...
>>> 
>>> which would pull the set of repos from the named config variable instead
>>> of looking around the filesystem.
>> 
>> Yes! This! That's a good way to make something generic that solves
>> the problem at hand, but might also have other applications! Most
>> excellent.
> 
> I'm glad I wasn't the only one super geeked when I read this idea. I'd
> use the heck out of this in my .bashrc too. Sounds awesome. I actually
> had a short-lived fling last year with a script to summarize my
> uncommitted changes in all repos at the beginning of every session
> (dropped because it became one more thing to gloss over) and could have
> really used this command.

I was planning to build a CLI tool that help manage multiple repos maintenance
like what was just described here.
My experience using my poor-man-scalar [1] bash script is: For multiple repositories,
the process count could get out of control quite quickly and there are probably other
issues that I have not thought of / encountered...

There is definitely a need to keep all the repos updated with pre-fetch 
and updated commit-graph, while staying compact / garbage free.
Having this in Git does simplify a lot of daily operations for end users.

> 
>> 
>>> You could use either as a one-liner in the crontab (depending on which
>>> is easier with your repo layout).
>> 
>> The hope is that we can have such a clean layout. I'm particularly
>> fond of the config option because users may want to opt-in to
>> background maintenance only on some repos, even if they put them
>> in a consistent location.
>> 
>> In the _far_ future, we might even want to add a repo to this
>> "maintenance.repos" list during 'git init' and 'git clone' so
>> this is automatic. It then becomes opt-out at that point, which
>> is why I saw the _far, far_ future.
> 
> Oh, I like this idea a lot. Then I can do something silly like
> 
>  alias reproclone="git clone --no-maintainenance"
> 
> and get the benefits on everything else that I plan to be using
> frequently.

This started to remind me of automatic updates in some of the popular OS.
Where download/install/cleanup update of multiple software components are
managed under a single tool.

I wonder if this is the path git should take in the 'new world' that Junio mentioned. [2]

But I am also super geeked reading this. :)

> 
> - Emily

Regards,
Son Luong.

[1]: https://github.com/sluongng/git-care
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqmu48y7rw.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com/