docs/git-pack-refs: document heuristic used for packing loose refs

The `git pack-refs --auto` flag asks the ref backend to decide for
itself whether or not references need to be repacked. This is done to
ensure that we don't repack in cases where the backend is already in a
good-enough state, which is typically the case for the "reftable"
backend that performs auto-compaction on writes.

As such, we initially only had heuristics in place for the "reftable"
backend. The "files" backend didn't have any heuristics, so we'd repack
loose references every time `git pack-refs --auto` was executed. This
caused excessive repacking with that backend though, which is why we
eventually implemented a heuristic via c3459ae9ef2 (refs/files: use
heuristic to decide whether to repack with `--auto`, 2024-09-04).

The documentation for the `--auto` flag hasn't been updated accordingly
and still claims that we don't have any metrics for the "files" backend.
Update it to reflect the new reality.

Reported-by: Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/git-pack-refs.txt b/Documentation/git-pack-refs.txt
index 2dcabaf74cefb4111e94e92b8c7e47e8346a1d42..a6cd43c9beedaca34f0c22795489a69b1510d8c0 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/git-pack-refs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-pack-refs.txt
@@ -66,7 +66,10 @@ Pack refs as needed depending on the current state of the ref database. The
 behavior depends on the ref format used by the repository and may change in the
 future.
 +
-       - "files": No special handling for `--auto` has been implemented.
+       - "files": Loose references are packed into the `packed-refs` file
+         based on the ratio of loose references to the size of the
+         `packed-refs` file. The bigger the `packed-refs` file, the more loose
+         references need to exist before we repack.
 +
        - "reftable": Tables are compacted such that they form a geometric
          sequence. For two tables N and N+1, where N+1 is newer, this