'git maintenance' won't work on bare repos

Hello,

Because we have a fairly large repository, our developers rely on
worktrees created off a bare mirror clone. I'd like to enable
maintenance, and since the worktrees are rather short-lived instances,
we cannot point 'git maintenance' to it.
So the proper solution is to do it from the bare clone itself.
However, 'git maintenance register' silently fails (with an 0 exit
code). There are two tell-tale signs:
1. 'git config --global --get maintenance.repo' returns '.'
2. There are no Crontab entries inserted.

Running 'git maintenance register' from a worktree created off the
bare clone works as expected.

To reproduce:
git init --bare test-me
git -C test-me maintenance register
git config --global --get maintenance.repo

The workaround, for now, is to run this from a worktree, then use 'git
config' to reset to the corresponding bare clone location.

Thanks,

Clément

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 9:02 PM Clement Moyroud
[off-list ref] wrote:

So the proper solution is to do it from the bare clone itself.
However, 'git maintenance register' silently fails (with an 0 exit
code). There are two tell-tale signs:
1. 'git config --global --get maintenance.repo' returns '.'
2. There are no Crontab entries inserted.

I can confirm that problem 1 is a bug. However, I am unable to
reproduce problem 2.

Note that the crontab entry won't be created until you run `git
maintenance start`. Is it possible that you are forgetting that step?
(Be aware that `git maintenance start` will show a misleading "no
crontab for <user>" message if you don't already have a crontab file,
but the crontab entry will be created nevertheless, as evidenced by
`crontab -l`.)

To reproduce:
git init --bare test-me
git -C test-me maintenance register
git config --global --get maintenance.repo

I have a patch which fixes the problem with the bare repo path being
incorrectly registered as ".", but I still need to create a regression
test for it.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 12:03 AM Eric Sunshine [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 9:02 PM Clement Moyroud
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

So the proper solution is to do it from the bare clone itself.
However, 'git maintenance register' silently fails (with an 0 exit
code). There are two tell-tale signs:
1. 'git config --global --get maintenance.repo' returns '.'

I have a patch which fixes the problem with the bare repo path being
incorrectly registered as ".", but I still need to create a regression
test for it.

Patch posted here:
https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210223073107.40675-1-sunshine@sunshineco.com/

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 9:03 PM Eric Sunshine [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

1. 'git config --global --get maintenance.repo' returns '.'
2. There are no Crontab entries inserted.

I can confirm that problem 1 is a bug. However, I am unable to
reproduce problem 2.

Note that the crontab entry won't be created until you run `git
maintenance start`. Is it possible that you are forgetting that step?
(Be aware that `git maintenance start` will show a misleading "no
crontab for <user>" message if you don't already have a crontab file,
but the crontab entry will be created nevertheless, as evidenced by
`crontab -l`.)

My bad. I misread the manpage, and didn't try to run 'git maintenance start'
on the bare repo, since the first step did not look right.

I have a patch which fixes the problem with the bare repo path being
incorrectly registered as ".", but I still need to create a regression
test for it.

I saw the patch, thanks for the quick fix!