gitk gives "argument list too long" error

Question

I always got the "argument list too long" error when I try to use "gitk" to open the GUI of the history for some large repo. Even using "gitk -n" didn't solve the problem. Does anybody here have same issue? Thanks,

couldn't execute "git": argument list too long
couldn't execute "git": argument list too long
    while executing
"open [concat $cmd $ids] r"
    (procedure "getallcommits" line 47)
    invoked from within
"getallcommits"
    (procedure "readcache" line 80)
    invoked from within
"readcache file13"
    ("eval" body line 1)
    invoked from within
"eval $script"
    (procedure "dorunq" line 11)
    invoked from within
"dorunq"
    ("after" script)

Cicatrix

what are you trying to do? whats your comand? seems that you added too many arguments – Mindamindanao

My command is just "gitk" – Cicatrix

Answer 1

"Argument list too long" is a kernel error when you pass in too many arguments on a command line.

Probably your repo contains something which causes $ids (I'm purely speculating here) to exceed the ARG_MAX limit of your platform.

This is basically a bug in Gitk, but if you can figure out which resource is causing this, you can probably work around the problem by limiting or pruning it somehow.

Ziska

This appears to attempt to address the problem, or a similar one -- does your repo have a lot of tags? git.vger.kernel.narkive.com/tDVsZzg7/… – Ziska

Though I guess the error message seems to allude to a repo with a lot of commits. – Ziska

Yes. It's a big repo. It currently has 9K tags. – Cicatrix

Ok. But even "gitk -n" can not limit the results? – Cicatrix

Not finding that in the manual page, never used gitk so no direct experience ... Try checking out a shallow clone or otherwise limiting what ends up in the clone you are operating on. – Ziska

I have this issue at Windows. It helps to limit number of tags and branches - fetch only what is needed, remove as it's merged, etc. – Adila

Answer 2

I've found a workaroung here and it worked for me: just remove .git/gitk.cache file.

Luciusluck

Worked for me as well. Thanks :) – Everard

Doesn't work for me (macOS 12.6 French, system Git) – Superpatriot

Answer 3

Adding on to the answer above: If you are using worktrees, bear in mind that there are other gitk.cache files too, like so:

.git/worktrees/dev-2/gitk.cache

You may have to delete those too.

Quadratic

Answer 4

I consistently had this error on a repo with a large number of references (50k+ remote branches).

The solution is twofold:

1. Reduce the number of refs to something your system can handle.

Obviously, deleting merged branches is a good practice, as well is keeping the total number of refs to a reasonable value.

In my case I had no control on the remote and therefore couldn’t do so at the source. So I used git’s ability to filter remote refs by setting the remote.<name>.fetch configuration option through the git remote set-branches command:

git remote set-branches $REMOTE $BRANCH0 $BRANCH1 $BRANCH2 # List only the few branches I’m interested in.
for REMOTE_BRANCH in $(git branch -r); do
  git branch -rd "${REMOTE_BRANCH}" # Clear the branches I already know about
done
git fetch $REMOTE # Fetch again the branches I selected on the first line.

2. THEN, delete gitk’s cache(s)

Once the total number of refs existings in .git/refs is low enough, you should clear all gitk’s caches with:

find .git -name gitk.cache -delete

Foxed