Re: [Feature Request] Allow batch removal of remotes with 'git remote remove'

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 22, 2025, 03:08 UTC
Message-ID: <20250122030832.GA3322144@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <Z5BW5ofJVbM1obb5@tapette.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 02:24:38AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Because `git remote remove` will remove remote-tracking branches and
> their reflogs, we typically will want to do that all at once in a single
> ref transaction, and hence in one command.  Not doing so performs very
> poorly (as does, notably `git remote rename`[0]) when all of the refs are
> packed.  If you have a large number of remotes to delete and a large
> number of total refs, this will perform really badly indeed, since the
> operation of rewriting the packed-refs file becomes quadratic.
> 
> The removal of the remote-tracking branches is also the reason that
> editing the config isn't sufficient, either.

I think the config update is probably quadratic, too (in the number of remotes). Each one is going to rewrite the whole config file, minus its matching section. But a "remove" operation that took multiple remotes could do it all in a single pass.

If somebody does implement "remote remove" that takes multiple names, I hope they'll refactor to do all of the operations in a single pass, and not just loop on builtin/remote.c:rm() internally.

Probably git-config could stand to learn similar tricks, too. There is "--remove-section", but I don't think you can pass multiple sections (and it's likewise quadratic).

-Peff