After deleting a branch or amending a commit I still have orphaned
objects in the repository:
$ mkdir repo; cd repo
$ git init
$ date > foo; git add foo; git commit -mmsg1
$ date > foo; git add foo; git commit -mmsg2
$ git checkout -b branch-1 HEAD^
Switched to a new branch 'branch-1'
$ git commit --allow-empty -mbranch-1
[branch-1 84cfad2] branch-1
$ git log --oneline
84cfad2 branch-1
09fdcb1 msg1
$ find .git/objects/ -type f | sort | nl
1 .git/objects/09/fdcb1cb7d5642874bd642ce5685ac0bebd116c
2 .git/objects/41/d9ceb271c5e72f8a94a38dc4852ab501566bd1
3 .git/objects/4f/c6596065dd08ebc62ce0728e2407d58dbde7e1
4 .git/objects/5f/c4d7af12460d774be720f8761da0be2595404d
5 .git/objects/84/cfad2cea2ae3f7a67530d5c596853f656e68d9
6 .git/objects/a1/5faea60776cd537c4ef527f08caff48ff6c86b
7 .git/objects/c8/c0278da7cf96d86c5881f3884b5015deee7113
These objects are 2 files, 2 trees, and 3 commits. If now delete the
branch again, I'd like to have the unneeded commit deleted, but:
$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
$ git branch -D branch-1
Deleted branch branch-1 (was 84cfad2).
$ git reflog expire --all
$ git prune
$ find .git/objects/ -type f | sort | nl
1 .git/objects/09/fdcb1cb7d5642874bd642ce5685ac0bebd116c
2 .git/objects/41/d9ceb271c5e72f8a94a38dc4852ab501566bd1
3 .git/objects/4f/c6596065dd08ebc62ce0728e2407d58dbde7e1
4 .git/objects/5f/c4d7af12460d774be720f8761da0be2595404d
5 .git/objects/84/cfad2cea2ae3f7a67530d5c596853f656e68d9 <-- [1]
6 .git/objects/a1/5faea60776cd537c4ef527f08caff48ff6c86b
7 .git/objects/c8/c0278da7cf96d86c5881f3884b5015deee7113
Why is [1] not deleted? It seems reflog still knows about the deleted
branch, and probably this is the reason git keeps the referenced
commit:
$ git reflog
c8c0278 HEAD@{0}: checkout: moving from branch-1 to master
84cfad2 HEAD@{1}: commit: branch-1
09fdcb1 HEAD@{2}: checkout: moving from master to branch-1
c8c0278 HEAD@{3}: commit: msg2
09fdcb1 HEAD@{4}: commit (initial): msg1
Also, git gc, mentioned in the man page for git-reflog does not help.
And I see similar things when amending a commit, where the old commit
object is kept. How can one get rid of this?
Steve