apply specific command for each git repository

Question

I want compress all the git repositories on my computer (say in ~). I.e., for each directory {}, that contains directory or file (in case of submodules) named .git, I want to execute git gc --aggressive --git-dir={}.

I tried the following:

/bin/find /c/libs/boost/ -name '.git' -print -exec git --git-dir=dirname {} gc --aggressive \;

but output consist of plenty of fatal: Not a git repository: 'dirname /c/libs/boost/.git' etc. What should I do to use dirname command correctly? Or something else to achieve desired effect?

Answer 1

You're passing the word dirname as the argument to --git-dir.

With GNU or FreeBSD find, the -execdir action executes a command in the directory containing the matching file.

find /c/libs/boost/ -name '.git' -execdir git gc --aggressive \;

If your find command doesn't have -execdir, you can pass the .git directory as an argument to --git-dir.

find /c/libs/boost/ -name '.git' -exec git --git-dir {} gc --aggressive \;

In general, if you need shell expansion, invoke a shell explicitly, with sh -c 'shell command'. Don't attempt to perform any interpolation in the shell command, as that would fail with file names containing special characters. Pass the match(es) as an argument to the shell script. Note that after sh -c 'shell command', the first argument is $0, and the other arguments ($1, $2, …) collectively form "$@".

find /c/libs/boost/ -name '.git' -exec sh -c 'cd "${0%/.}" && git gc --aggressive' {} \;
find /c/libs/boost/ -name '.git' -exec sh -c 'for dir; do cd "${dir%/.}" && git gc --aggressive' _  {} +

Answer 2

for location in $( find -type d -name .git /path/to/base/of/search ); do
    if pushd "$location/.."; then
        git gc --aggressive --git-dir=.
        popd
    fi
done

Answer 3

I find solution (works on msys):

/bin/find /c/libs/boost/ -name '.git' -print -exec bash -c 'cd $(dirname {}) ; git gc --aggressive' \; 2>&1 | tee git-gc.log