Merge branch 'maint-1.6.1' into maint

[git.git] / Documentation / git-filter-branch.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt b/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt
index 451950bab67702a236c55e77d6f3a0723a812488..c1193953a128201be821538176c1fd666950afb3 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt
@@ -31,6 +31,9 @@ changes, which would normally have no effect.  Nevertheless, this may be
 useful in the future for compensating for some git bugs or such,
 therefore such a usage is permitted.
 
+*NOTE*: This command honors `.git/info/grafts`. If you have any grafts
+defined, running this command will make them permanent.
+
 *WARNING*! The rewritten history will have different object names for all
 the objects and will not converge with the original branch.  You will not
 be able to easily push and distribute the rewritten branch on top of the
@@ -212,6 +215,11 @@ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached filename' HEAD
 
 Now, you will get the rewritten history saved in HEAD.
 
+As with using `rm filename`, `git rm --cached filename` will fail
+if the file is absent from the tree of a commit.  If it is not important
+whether the file is already absent from the tree, you can use
+`git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch filename` instead.
+
 To rewrite the repository to look as if `foodir/` had been its project
 root, and discard all other history:
 
@@ -334,6 +342,47 @@ git filter-branch --index-filter \
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
+
+Checklist for Shrinking a Repository
+------------------------------------
+
+git-filter-branch is often used to get rid of a subset of files,
+usually with some combination of `\--index-filter` and
+`\--subdirectory-filter`.  People expect the resulting repository to
+be smaller than the original, but you need a few more steps to
+actually make it smaller, because git tries hard not to lose your
+objects until you tell it to.  First make sure that:
+
+* You really removed all variants of a filename, if a blob was moved
+  over its lifetime.  `git log \--name-only \--follow \--all \--
+  filename` can help you find renames.
+
+* You really filtered all refs: use `\--tag-name-filter cat \--
+  \--all` when calling git-filter-branch.
+
+Then there are two ways to get a smaller repository.  A safer way is
+to clone, that keeps your original intact.
+
+* Clone it with `git clone +++file:///path/to/repo+++`.  The clone
+  will not have the removed objects.  See linkgit:git-clone[1].  (Note
+  that cloning with a plain path just hardlinks everything!)
+
+If you really don't want to clone it, for whatever reasons, check the
+following points instead (in this order).  This is a very destructive
+approach, so *make a backup* or go back to cloning it.  You have been
+warned.
+
+* Remove the original refs backed up by git-filter-branch: say `git
+  for-each-ref \--format="%(refname)" refs/original/ | xargs -n 1 git
+  update-ref -d`.
+
+* Expire all reflogs with `git reflog expire \--expire=now \--all`.
+
+* Garbage collect all unreferenced objects with `git gc \--prune=now`
+  (or if your git-gc is not new enough to support arguments to
+  `\--prune`, use `git repack -ad; git prune` instead).
+
+
 Author
 ------
 Written by Petr "Pasky" Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>,