gitk management of git diff-tree processes

I find that if I am in gitk browsing through commits, gitk seems to be spawning a git diff-tree process in order to display the changes and patch file list in the bottom panes.

I have a certain commit that adds a very large amount of data to my repository (1.2 GB). Understandably, the git diff-tree process that tries to display the changes in this commit takes a VERY long time to run (e.g. churns indefinitely).

The issue is that I find that if I simply browse past this commit (e.g. using up/down arrows), gitk starts up a git diff-tree process and leaves it running. As many times as I pass the commit (e.g. while looking at changes before and after this commit), I end up with multiple processes all running and my CPUs quickly go to 100%. Furthermore, even if I exit gitk, all the git diff-tree processes keep running unless I manually kill them.

Perhaps gitk could kill the git diff-tree process it spawns if its output is no longer needed (e.g. user browses to a different commit, or gitk exits).

Thank you, David

$ ps -aF UID PID PPID C SZ RSS PSR STIME TTY TIME CMD david 23635 1 18 88365 102892 0 10:49 pts/1 00:01:11 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23640 1 18 88368 102908 1 10:49 pts/1 00:01:10 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23644 1 16 88368 102904 0 10:49 pts/1 00:01:04 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23646 1 16 88367 102916 0 10:49 pts/1 00:01:04 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23652 1 17 88365 102892 1 10:49 pts/1 00:01:07 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23656 1 17 88368 102920 1 10:49 pts/1 00:01:06 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23660 1 16 88369 102932 0 10:49 pts/1 00:01:03 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23664 1 16 88368 102908 0 10:49 pts/1 00:01:03 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23670 1 16 88368 102904 1 10:49 pts/1 00:01:03 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23680 1 17 88365 102896 1 10:49 pts/1 00:01:05 git diff-tree -r -p --textconv -C --cc --no-commit-id -U3 8df50645c4cadf26dc951540e0c713b0826247b8 david 23851 10444 0 692 1032 0 10:56 pts/1 00:00:00 ps -aF

$ git version git version 1.6.4.4