The linkgit:git-fsck[1] command runs a number of self-consistency checks
on the repository, and reports on any problems. This may take some
-time. The most common warning by far is about "dangling" objects:
+time.
-------------------------------------------------
$ git fsck
...
-------------------------------------------------
-Dangling objects are not a problem. At worst they may take up a little
-extra disk space. They can sometimes provide a last-resort method for
-recovering lost work--see <<dangling-objects>> for details.
+You will see informational messages on dangling objects. They are objects
+that still exist in the repository but are no longer referenced by any of
+your branches, and can (and will) be removed after a while with "gc".
+You can run `git fsck --no-dangling` to supress these messages, and still
+view real errors.
[[recovering-lost-changes]]
Recovering lost changes
Reflogs
^^^^^^^
-Say you modify a branch with `linkgit:git-reset[1] --hard`, and then
+Say you modify a branch with +linkgit:git-reset[1] \--hard+, and then
realize that the branch was the only reference you had to that point in
history.
Assume the output looks like this:
------------------------------------------------
-$ git fsck --full
+$ git fsck --full --no-dangling
broken link from tree 2d9263c6d23595e7cb2a21e5ebbb53655278dff8
to blob 4b9458b3786228369c63936db65827de3cc06200
missing blob 4b9458b3786228369c63936db65827de3cc06200
------------------------------------------------
-(Typically there will be some "dangling object" messages too, but they
-aren't interesting.)
-
Now you know that blob 4b9458b3 is missing, and that the tree 2d9263c6
points to it. If you could find just one copy of that missing blob
object, possibly in some other repository, you could move it into
If you are interested in more details of the revision walking process,
just have a look at the first implementation of `cmd_log()`; call
-`git show v1.3.0{tilde}155^2{tilde}4` and scroll down to that function (note that you
+`git show v1.3.0~155^2~4` and scroll down to that function (note that you
no longer need to call `setup_pager()` directly).
Nowadays, `git log` is a builtin, which means that it is _contained_ in the
negative numbers in case of different errors--and 0 on success.
- the variable `sha1` in the function signature of `get_sha1()` is `unsigned
- char {asterisk}`, but is actually expected to be a pointer to `unsigned
+ char *`, but is actually expected to be a pointer to `unsigned
char[20]`. This variable will contain the 160-bit SHA-1 of the given
- commit. Note that whenever a SHA-1 is passed as `unsigned char {asterisk}`, it
+ commit. Note that whenever a SHA-1 is passed as `unsigned char *`, it
is the binary representation, as opposed to the ASCII representation in
hex characters, which is passed as `char *`.