Amey-Thakur Repository hygiene
Repositories accumulate: merged branches, commented-out code, tooling for processes that ended, and large files committed once. None of it is urgent and together it makes the repository harder to work in and slower to clone.
Method
- Delete branches on merge, automatically. Stale branches are the most common clutter and the easiest to remove at the source.
- Keep large binaries out of history. Git stores every version forever, so a committed binary inflates every clone permanently and needs specialised storage instead.
- Remove dead code rather than commenting it. History has the old version, and commented-out blocks are noise that confuses search (see dead-code-removal).
- Prune configuration for tools no longer used. Configuration files for departed tooling mislead newcomers into thinking they are required.
- Keep ignore rules current. New tooling produces new artefacts, and untracked noise makes status output useless.
- Audit stale open pull requests. Long-open pull requests are either work someone should finish or work that should be closed, and both are decisions (see issue-and-project-tracking).
- Review access periodically. Collaborators and integrations accumulate, and access nobody remembers granting is a real risk (see repository-permissions).
Boundaries
Hygiene reduces friction rather than adding capability, so it competes with feature work for attention. Rewriting history to remove large files breaks every existing clone and needs coordination. Some apparent clutter is deliberate, so deletion needs a check with whoever owns it.