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62 changes: 62 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/git-maintenance.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -273,6 +273,68 @@ schedule to ensure you are executing the correct binaries in your
schedule.


BACKGROUND MAINTENANCE ON MACOS SYSTEMS
---------------------------------------

While macOS technically supports `cron`, using `crontab -e` requires
elevated privileges and the executed process does not have a full user
context. Without a full user context, Git and its credential helpers
cannot access stored credentials, so some maintenance tasks are not
functional.

Instead, `git maintenance start` interacts with the `launchctl` tool,
which is the recommended way to schedule timed jobs in macOS. Scheduling
maintenance through `git maintenance (start|stop)` requires some
`launchctl` features available only in macOS 10.11 or later.

Your user-specific scheduled tasks are stored as XML-formatted `.plist`
files in `~/Library/LaunchAgents/`. You can see the currently-registered
tasks using the following command:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
$ ls ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.git-scm.git*
org.git-scm.git.daily.plist
org.git-scm.git.hourly.plist
org.git-scm.git.weekly.plist
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

One task is registered for each `--schedule=<frequency>` option. To
inspect how the XML format describes each schedule, open one of these
`.plist` files in an editor and inspect the `<array>` element following
the `<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>` element.

`git maintenance start` will overwrite these files and register the
tasks again with `launchctl`, so any customizations should be done by
creating your own `.plist` files with distinct names. Similarly, the
`git maintenance stop` command will unregister the tasks with `launchctl`
and delete the `.plist` files.

To create more advanced customizations to your background tasks, see
launchctl.plist(5) for more information.


BACKGROUND MAINTENANCE ON WINDOWS SYSTEMS
-----------------------------------------

Windows does not support `cron` and instead has its own system for
scheduling background tasks. The `git maintenance start` command uses
the `schtasks` command to submit tasks to this system. You can inspect
all background tasks using the Task Scheduler application. The tasks
added by Git have names of the form `Git Maintenance (<frequency>)`.
The Task Scheduler GUI has ways to inspect these tasks, but you can also
export the tasks to XML files and view the details there.

Note that since Git is a console application, these background tasks
create a console window visible to the current user. This can be changed
manually by selecting the "Run whether user is logged in or not" option
in Task Scheduler. This change requires a password input, which is why
`git maintenance start` does not select it by default.

If you want to customize the background tasks, please rename the tasks
so future calls to `git maintenance (start|stop)` do not overwrite your
custom tasks.


GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite
7 changes: 7 additions & 0 deletions Makefile
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2458,6 +2458,13 @@ compat/nedmalloc/nedmalloc.sp compat/nedmalloc/nedmalloc.o: EXTRA_CPPFLAGS = \
compat/nedmalloc/nedmalloc.sp: SP_EXTRA_FLAGS += -Wno-non-pointer-null
endif

headless-git.o: compat/win32/headless.c
$(QUIET_CC)$(CC) $(ALL_CFLAGS) $(COMPAT_CFLAGS) \
-fno-stack-protector -o $@ -c -Wall -Wwrite-strings $<

headless-git$X: headless-git.o git.res
$(QUIET_LINK)$(CC) $(ALL_LDFLAGS) -mwindows $(COMPAT_CFLAGS) -o $@ $^

git-%$X: %.o GIT-LDFLAGS $(GITLIBS)
$(QUIET_LINK)$(CC) $(ALL_CFLAGS) -o $@ $(ALL_LDFLAGS) $(filter %.o,$^) $(LIBS)

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