Bug#1107620: vcswatch: e2fsprogs: repository blocked even though it is nowhere near 500MiB

Hi!

On Tue, 2025-06-10 at 15:14:11 -0400, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> Package: qa.debian.org
> Severity: normal

> I was recently looking at the tracker page for e2fsprogs, and I
> noticed that there was the VFS watch error: "Failed to analyze the VCS
> repository. Please troubleshoot and fix the issue."
> 
> Looking at this this page [1] the complaint seems to be: "Repository
> size 531054592 exceeds 500 MiB, blocking it".  However, looking at the
> e2fsprogs git repo, the bare repo (just the git packs) is only 43
> megs, and the checked out working tree is 41 megs.  I'm not sure why
> the repo on VCS watch is over 500 MiB, but could it be that it's in
> deperate need of having a "git gc" being run on it?
> 
> [1] https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/vcswatch?package=e2fsprogs
> 
> Note, this isn't the first time this has come up.  The last time I
> reported it to the debian-qa mailing list on July 25, 2024.  Perhaps
> there needs to be an automated "git gc" run on the git clones of the
> repos which are used by vcswatch?

Yes, the same happened (a long time ago) again as well with dpkg,
for which I also had filed a previous report (#1072498):

  https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/vcswatch?package=dpkg

On my local tree with no gc for a while the .git dir takes ~100 MiB,
after a gc --aggressive now it takes 66 MiB.

There is definitely something wrong with how these repos are being
handled I think (maybe gc is being prevented or something?).

Thanks,
Guillem