Re: Avoid pruning some commits within a repo

[Dusty Mabe <dusty dustymabe com>]

On 2/22/19 7:49 PM, Ryan Rueth via ostree-list wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We have a build repo that contains branches for multiple components of our build. This lets us skip 
> rebuilding components that already exist in the build repo, but the various components are re-built at 
> different frequencies. I'd like to prune old objects from this directory, but avoid deleting a component 
> that is still being used for the whole build.
>
> Does anyone have any recommendations for how I might prune a repository, but avoid pruning some old commits 
> that are currently the HEADs of branches and still in use?
>
> My current plan was to use the following to prune commits:
>
> ostree --repo=<repo> prune --keep-younger-than='7 days ago' --refs-only
>
> As an example, if I could do something like `touch` a commit that is the HEAD of a given branch to update 
> the timestamp, then I could just `touch` all of the commits that are used for the full build each time. 
> Thus, when the prune command ran, the still-in-use commits would be more recent than 7 days old.

I did some exploration in this space a little bit ago:
https://dustymabe.com/2018/03/04/pruning-policy-for-specific-branches-of-ostree-repos/

I don't know if this is exactly what you are looking for (i.e. what happens if a commit is
in the history of multiple branches?) but maybe it's a start. You might find some new enhancement
requests as part of your work.

Dusty