How can I view progress of git gc in the background?

Question

When I run a command like git gc, I get a message like this:

$ git fetch
Auto packing the repository in background for optimum performance.
See "git help gc" for manual housekeeping.

It seems like newer versions of Git run auto-packing in the background now, which is a nice feature! If I run git gc manually, I get this message:

$ git gc
fatal: gc is already running on machine 'machinename' pid 14009 (use --force if not)

This makes sense. However, I would quite like to be able to watch the progress of gc that is running the background somehow?

Obviously, I could run something like while ! git gc ; do sleep 1s ; done, but that doesn't give me nearly as much information as a pretty Git progress indicator could, and it runs auto-packing an additional time.

Try sending `SIGUSR1` with the `watch` command. – hjpotter92 Sep 20 '16 at 18:07 — hjpotter92, Sep 20 '16 at 18:07
@hjpotter92 That doesn't do anything. – Flimm Sep 21 '16 at 08:42 — Flimm, Sep 21 '16 at 08:42

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 21 '16 at 17:29

5

You can configure it to be non-background, then I belive it should report its progress:

 git config gc.autoDetach false

answered Sep 21 '16 at 17:29

max630

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This doesn't actually do anything to an already running background gc, it simply prevents any future command from doing the gc in the background. – Paul Wagland Jan 15 '18 at 21:24

How can I view progress of git gc in the background?

1 Answers1

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