From 6fb9195f6c6df047949efcdb8a1fb9eaed0c925e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jeff King Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2021 03:24:48 -0400 Subject: doc: warn people against --max-pack-size This option is almost never a good idea, as the resulting repository is larger and slower (see the new explanations in the docs). I outlined the potential problems. We could go further and make the option harder to find (or at least, make the command-line option descriptions a much more terse "you probably don't want this; see pack.packsizeLimit for details"). But this seems like a minimal change that may prevent people from thinking it's more useful than it is. Signed-off-by: Jeff King Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/config/pack.txt | 23 +++++++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) (limited to 'Documentation/config') diff --git a/Documentation/config/pack.txt b/Documentation/config/pack.txt index 3da4ea98e2..10c778a942 100644 --- a/Documentation/config/pack.txt +++ b/Documentation/config/pack.txt @@ -99,12 +99,23 @@ pack.packSizeLimit:: packing to a file when repacking, i.e. the git:// protocol is unaffected. It can be overridden by the `--max-pack-size` option of linkgit:git-repack[1]. Reaching this limit results - in the creation of multiple packfiles; which in turn prevents - bitmaps from being created. - The minimum size allowed is limited to 1 MiB. - The default is unlimited. - Common unit suffixes of 'k', 'm', or 'g' are - supported. + in the creation of multiple packfiles. ++ +Note that this option is rarely useful, and may result in a larger total +on-disk size (because Git will not store deltas between packs), as well +as worse runtime performance (object lookup within multiple packs is +slower than a single pack, and optimizations like reachability bitmaps +cannot cope with multiple packs). ++ +If you need to actively run Git using smaller packfiles (e.g., because your +filesystem does not support large files), this option may help. But if +your goal is to transmit a packfile over a medium that supports limited +sizes (e.g., removable media that cannot store the whole repository), +you are likely better off creating a single large packfile and splitting +it using a generic multi-volume archive tool (e.g., Unix `split`). ++ +The minimum size allowed is limited to 1 MiB. The default is unlimited. +Common unit suffixes of 'k', 'm', or 'g' are supported. pack.useBitmaps:: When true, git will use pack bitmaps (if available) when packing -- cgit v1.2.3