git/Documentation/git-pack-refs.txt
Jeff King 6cf378f0cb docs: stop using asciidoc no-inline-literal
In asciidoc 7, backticks like `foo` produced a typographic
effect, but did not otherwise affect the syntax. In asciidoc
8, backticks introduce an "inline literal" inside which markup
is not interpreted. To keep compatibility with existing
documents, asciidoc 8 has a "no-inline-literal" attribute to
keep the old behavior. We enabled this so that the
documentation could be built on either version.

It has been several years now, and asciidoc 7 is no longer
in wide use. We can now decide whether or not we want
inline literals on their own merits, which are:

  1. The source is much easier to read when the literal
     contains punctuation. You can use `master~1` instead
     of `master{tilde}1`.

  2. They are less error-prone. Because of point (1), we
     tend to make mistakes and forget the extra layer of
     quoting.

This patch removes the no-inline-literal attribute from the
Makefile and converts every use of backticks in the
documentation to an inline literal (they must be cleaned up,
or the example above would literally show "{tilde}" in the
output).

Problematic sites were found by grepping for '`.*[{\\]' and
examined and fixed manually. The results were then verified
by comparing the output of "html2text" on the set of
generated html pages. Doing so revealed that in addition to
making the source more readable, this patch fixes several
formatting bugs:

  - HTML rendering used the ellipsis character instead of
    literal "..." in code examples (like "git log A...B")

  - some code examples used the right-arrow character
    instead of '->' because they failed to quote

  - api-config.txt did not quote tilde, and the resulting
    HTML contained a bogus snippet like:

      <tt><sub></tt> foo <tt></sub>bar</tt>

    which caused some parsers to choke and omit whole
    sections of the page.

  - git-commit.txt confused ``foo`` (backticks inside a
    literal) with ``foo'' (matched double-quotes)

  - mentions of `A U Thor <author@example.com>` used to
    erroneously auto-generate a mailto footnote for
    author@example.com

  - the description of --word-diff=plain incorrectly showed
    the output as "[-removed-] and {added}", not "{+added+}".

  - using "prime" notation like:

      commit `C` and its replacement `C'`

    confused asciidoc into thinking that everything between
    the first backtick and the final apostrophe were meant
    to be inside matched quotes

  - asciidoc got confused by the escaping of some of our
    asterisks. In particular,

      `credential.\*` and `credential.<url>.\*`

    properly escaped the asterisk in the first case, but
    literally passed through the backslash in the second
    case.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2012-04-26 13:19:06 -07:00

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git-pack-refs(1)
================
NAME
----
git-pack-refs - Pack heads and tags for efficient repository access
SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'git pack-refs' [--all] [--no-prune]
DESCRIPTION
-----------
Traditionally, tips of branches and tags (collectively known as
'refs') were stored one file per ref under `$GIT_DIR/refs`
directory. While many branch tips tend to be updated often,
most tags and some branch tips are never updated. When a
repository has hundreds or thousands of tags, this
one-file-per-ref format both wastes storage and hurts
performance.
This command is used to solve the storage and performance
problem by stashing the refs in a single file,
`$GIT_DIR/packed-refs`. When a ref is missing from the
traditional `$GIT_DIR/refs` hierarchy, it is looked up in this
file and used if found.
Subsequent updates to branches always create new files under
`$GIT_DIR/refs` hierarchy.
A recommended practice to deal with a repository with too many
refs is to pack its refs with `--all --prune` once, and
occasionally run `git pack-refs --prune`. Tags are by
definition stationary and are not expected to change. Branch
heads will be packed with the initial `pack-refs --all`, but
only the currently active branch heads will become unpacked,
and the next `pack-refs` (without `--all`) will leave them
unpacked.
OPTIONS
-------
--all::
The command by default packs all tags and refs that are already
packed, and leaves other refs
alone. This is because branches are expected to be actively
developed and packing their tips does not help performance.
This option causes branch tips to be packed as well. Useful for
a repository with many branches of historical interests.
--no-prune::
The command usually removes loose refs under `$GIT_DIR/refs`
hierarchy after packing them. This option tells it not to.
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite