assistant: Prevent automatic commits from causing git-gc runs, as that can make things quite slow. Instead, git-gc --auto is run once a day. (This can be disabled by the usual gc.auto=0 setting.)

Assistant/Threads/Committer.hs

@@ -82,7 +82,8 @@ commitStaged = do
 		Right _ -> do
 			direct <- isDirect
 			let params = nomessage $ catMaybes
-				[ Just $ Param "commit"
+				[ Just $ Param "-c", Just $ Param "gc.auto=0"
+				, Just $ Param "commit"
 				, Just $ Param "--quiet"
 				{- In indirect mode, avoid running the
 				 - usual git-annex pre-commit hook;

Assistant/Threads/SanityChecker.hs

@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ import Assistant.Common
 import Assistant.DaemonStatus
 import Assistant.Alert
 import qualified Git.LsFiles
+import qualified Git.Command
 import Utility.ThreadScheduler
 import qualified Assistant.Threads.Watcher as Watcher
 import Utility.LogFile
@@ -71,6 +72,7 @@ waitForNextCheck = do
 dailyCheck :: Assistant Bool
 dailyCheck = do
 	g <- liftAnnex gitRepo
+
 	-- Find old unstaged symlinks, and add them to git.
 	(unstaged, cleanup) <- liftIO $ Git.LsFiles.notInRepo False ["."] g
 	now <- liftIO $ getPOSIXTime
@@ -81,6 +83,11 @@ dailyCheck = do
 				| isSymbolicLink s -> addsymlink file ms
 			_ -> noop
 	liftIO $ void cleanup
+
+	{- Allow git-gc to run once per day. More frequent gc is avoided
+	 - to avoid slowing things down. -}
+	void $ liftIO $ Git.Command.runBool [Param "gc", Param "--auto"] g
+
 	return True
   where
 	toonew timestamp now = now < (realToFrac (timestamp + slop) :: POSIXTime)

debian/changelog

@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ git-annex (4.20130228) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
     files in direct mode repositories.
   * assistant: Fix dropping content when a file is moved to an archive
     directory.
+  * assistant: Prevent automatic commits from causing git-gc runs,
+    as that can make things quite slow. Instead, git-gc --auto is run
+    once a day. (This can be disabled by the usual gc.auto=0 setting.)
 
  -- Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>  Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:20:40 -0400