Using Git Alternates
Now that you’re happily using github sync to pull down all your repos into local bare trees, you may want to free up a bit of disk space from duplicate objects (about 120MB for me).
git has a way for multiple repos to share object space by way of
alternates. You can read more about alternates in the
repository layout documentation, but essentially it’s a text file
that contains the location of another objects directory from which
objects may be fetched when needed.
Example:
Let’s say you’re me and have checked out my photo album. You’d end up with a .git directory that looks like this:
dhcp-39:/tmp/photo 599% du -sh .git
18M .git
By setting up an alternate using my git alternate command:
dhcp-39:/tmp/photo 600% git alternate ~/prog/github/photo.git
.git/objects -> /Users/dustin/prog/github/photo.git/objects
You can then gc and free up gangs of disk:
dhcp-39:/tmp/photo 601% git gc
Nothing new to pack.
Removing duplicate objects: 100% (256/256), done.
dhcp-39:/tmp/photo 602% du -sh .git
144K .git
From 18MB to 144KB, and everything pretty much works as it did before.
You don’t need my git alternate command, for that, of course, but it makes it a bit easier when you’ve got a lot of them to do.
