How can I get rid of "Lost heads"?

Question

In my first attempt to do something with git I used GitHub for Windows. As it is simple and quite primitive tool I decided to try SmartGit. As I was looking around I discovered I have leftovers over my tests - something called "lost heads". How can I get rid of this garbage? It seemed that

git gc --prune=now

or something similar should work, but nothing changed. I tried googling, but everybody was trying to do reverse thing - restore lost commits from lost head or something similar.

Bubonocele

Answer 1

According to the man page, git gc will not garbage collect files which are referenced through the 'reflogs' (.git/logs/<ref-name> files in your repository). These HEADs are exactly what SmartGit/Hg displays and when you remove these logs, the unreferenced commits should be collected by a git gc --prune=now.

Warning Unless there is no really good reason to completely get rid of these commits (like removing sensitive data), you shouldn't do that -- maybe some time later your might be interested in exactly one of these commits. At least, reclaiming disk space is no good reason, in my opinion.

Ptolemy

reclaiming disk space is not my reason (my git repository takes less than 0,01% of available space) - I want to get rid of "aaaeaeae test 2626" hanging everywhere. – Bubonocele

After some time it's difficult to find my commit when I have hundreds of them. That would be valid reason for me. – Nert

@pevik, if many lost heads make the Log confusing, just uncheck the option and only when needed recheck again. – Ptolemy

@mstrap, and is there any way how to do it with plain git (not in SmartGit)? – Nert

Answer 2

this will remove more than just git gc --prune=now:

git -c gc.reflogExpire=0 -c gc.reflogExpireUnreachable=0 -c gc.rerereresolved=0 \
-c gc.rerereunresolved=0 -c gc.pruneExpire=now gc "$@"

source: https://mcmap.net/q/12714/-how-to-remove-unreferenced-blobs-from-my-git-repository

Caboodle