On Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 9:33 AM Daniele Sassoli
[off-list ref] wrote:

Hi All,

When reading the output `git count-objects -v` there is a `garbage` field. At
first I thought this would highlight objects that are considered "garbage", i.e.
could be garbage collected. However, I kept noticing that this wasn't the case,
despite my repository having plenty of dangling objects (that where removed once
I run `git gc --prune=now`), garbage kept being 0.

I then turned to reading the docs, which state:
garbage: the number of files in the object database that are neither
valid loose objects nor valid packs

I don't think I've ever seen a definition of an invalid object? I tried adding
random chars to an object, effectively corrupting the repository(which `git
fsck` correctly picked up), but count-objects kept returning 0 at the garbage
field.

The only way I've been able to get count-objects to report some garbage is by
creating files in the packs directory (or in any of the sub-directories of
`objects` folder) with random names, like "test", or sometimes I've seen it
report the existence of lock files or even preserved files.

So my question is, am I fundamentally misunderstanding what garbage means, are
the docs simply unclear or is the functionality not working as expected?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond.
Dani

The most common way I've seen to get garbage files into the repository
is either someone pushing from elsewhere into the current repository
and interrupting the transfer mid-way through, or someone fetching
from elsewhere into the current repository and interrupting the
transfer mid-way through.  In either case, there will be a partial
packfile with a temporary name (since we use a temporary name at the
beginning and rename to the final location after the transfer is
complete), and `git count-objects -v` will report it as garbage.