Future-proofing Git repository maintenance

GitLab has reworked its repository maintenance strategy to improve the efficiency of Gitaly, the service handling Git repositories, especially for large monorepositories. The previous approach relied on client-side heuristics to perform maintenance tasks, which were not optimal for repositories of varying sizes and types. The new strategy, inspired by Git's `git gc --auto` command, introduces a single RPC call, OptimizeRepository, that intelligently assesses the on-disk state of repositories to determine necessary maintenance actions. This change has significantly reduced CPU load and compute time by avoiding unnecessary optimizations and has enhanced visibility into repository states through Prometheus metrics. Initially rolled out for specific GitLab.com repositories, the strategy has demonstrated improved performance and is now default-enabled for all installations starting with GitLab 15.8, with further enhancements planned, such as multi-pack indices and automated housekeeping tasks.

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