Re: Tracking few files among many

From: Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date: Oct 30, 2005, 15:29 UTC
Message-ID: <4364E6D7.9010707@op5.se>
In-Reply-To: <20051030130001.GA26652@ebar091.ebar.dtu.dk>

Peter Eriksen wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> Hello,
> 
> There's something I can't figure out.  I'm tracking a few
> configuration files in $HOME, but some operations are really
> slow.  Let's take git-status as example: 
> 
> ~ > git-status >laaangsom.txt
> ~ > wc -l laaangsom.txt
> 25875 laaangsom.txt
> ~ > cat laaangsom.txt
> #
> # Changed but not updated:
> #   (use git-update-index to mark for commit)
> #
> #       modified: .gaim/blist.xml
> #       modified: .gaim/prefs.xml
> #       modified: .mozilla/firefox/s4q22693.default/prefs.js
> #
> #
> # Untracked files:
> #   (use "git add" to add to commit)
> #
> #   [ A lot of untracked files. See the line count above. ]
> 
> What is going on?  This really doesn't seem like the wanted
> behavior.  Have I missed something?

Apart from the fact that git tracks objects using sha1-hashes, no.

However, hashing +25000 files takes quite some time even on a fairly quick computer. I also imagine that some of those files are quite large, so that doesn't really help.

If you really (really, really) want to use git to track configuration file changes in your homedir, I'd suggest creating a separate directory to keep the real files in and then symlink to those from their usual locations.

OTOH, since you *know* git-status (precisely because it looks for files not added to the index) to be slow, you should use git-diff* instead. I imagine you know what files you're tracking anyways since it's just a subset of 25000-something.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231