From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:41:18 GMT
Subject: Re: git status reads too many files
Message-ID: <7vipvcs9xt.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTikV4S51DXLADiRXWqjXdTD1OBLSdKjEWALZ9Ebh@mail.gmail.com>

Lasse Makholm <lasse.makholm@gmail.com> writes:

> This persistent across multiple runs of git status:
>
> $ strace -o /tmp/trace2 git status
> # On branch there
> nothing to commit (working directory clean)
> $ grep ^open /tmp/trace2 | wc -l
> 414
> $
>
> ...until the index is touched:
>
> $ touch .git/index

Don't do this; you are breaking the racy-git protection.

I think we opportunistically update the .git/index file in "git status" to
refresh the stat bits (but we don't error out when we cannot write a new
index, as you may be only browsing somebody else's repository with only a
read access to it).  It probably should be just the matter of adding a bit
of logic to notice that your index is racily clean.

Let me cook something real quick.