Daniele Sassoli <danielesassoli@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> When reading the output `git count-objects -v` there is a `garbage` field. At
> first I thought this would highlight objects that are considered "garbage", i.e.
> could be garbage collected. However, I kept noticing that this wasn't the case,
> despite my repository having plenty of dangling objects (that where removed once
> I run `git gc --prune=now`), garbage kept being 0.
count-objects is about quick housekeeping stats and does not (and
should never) analyze reachability like fsck does, which is required
to tell which objects are dangling.
> I then turned to reading the docs, which state:
> garbage: the number of files in the object database that are neither
> valid loose objects nor valid packs
>
> I don't think I've ever seen a definition of an invalid object?
> I tried adding random chars to an object, effectively corrupting
> the repository(which `git fsck` correctly picked up), but
> count-objects kept returning 0 at the garbage field.
count-objects is about quick housekeeping stats and does not (and
should never) analyze object contents like fsck does, which is
required to tell which objects are corrupt.
> The only way I've been able to get count-objects to report some garbage is by
> creating files in the packs directory (or in any of the sub-directories of
> `objects` folder) with random names, like "test", or sometimes I've seen it
> report the existence of lock files or even preserved files.
>
> So my question is, am I fundamentally misunderstanding what garbage means, are
> the docs simply unclear or is the functionality not working as expected?
>
> Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond.
> Dani
You are fundamentally understanding correctly. The command tells
you it found a garbage when you do this:
$ mkdir -p .git/objects/00 && >.git/objects/00/tmp-garbage
$ git count-objects -v
warning: garbage found: .git/objects/00/tmp-garbage
