Re: "git gc" doesn't seem to remove loose objects any more

"Mikael Magnusson" [off-list ref] writes:

[...]

IIRC git gc only removes loose objects older than two weeks, if you
really want to remove them now, run git prune. But make sure no other
git process can be active when you run it, or it could possibly step
on something.

OK, that makes sense.  Obviously I misunderstood this.  That doesn't
explain why the number of objects might increase after "git gc", but
perhaps that's for a good reason too.

Surely "git gui"'s warning is unhelpful, then: it warns I have more
than 2000 loose objects (in another checkout), offers to compress my
database, and I end up with an unchanged repository (which it still
complains about)?  Is this warning just redundant now that we've got
"git gc --auto"?