Re: inotify to minimize stat() calls

From: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 8, 2013, 10:53 UTC
Message-ID: <CACsJy8DZm153Tu_3GTOnxF8bFrYPh7_DP6Rn6rr3n6tfuVuv2Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v7glijoiy.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

>>  The possible options are:
>>  +
>> -       - 'no'     - Show no untracked files
>> +       - 'no'     - Show no untracked files (this is fastest)
>
> There is a trade-off around the use of -uno between safety and
> performance.  The default is not to use -uno so that you will not
> forget to add a file you newly created (i.e safety).  You would pay
> for the safety with the cost to find such untracked files (i.e.
> performance).
>
> I suspect that the documentation was written with the assumption
> that at least for the people who are reading this part of the
> documentation, the trade-off is obvious.  In order to find more
> information, you naturally need to spend more cycles.
>
> If the trade-off is not so obvious, however, I do not object at all
> to describing it. But if we are to do so, I do object to mentioning
> only one side of the trade-off.  People who choose "fastest" needs
> to be made very aware that they are disabling "safety".

On the topic of trading off, I was thinking about new -uauto as default that is like -uall if it takes less than a certan amount of time (e.g. 0.5 seconds), if it exceeds that limit, the operation is aborted (i.e. it turns to -uno). The safety net is still there, "git status" advices to use -u to show full information.

Or a less intrusive approach: measure the time and advice the user to (read doc and) use -uno.

But it's probably worth waiting for the first cut of inotify support from Ram. It's better with inotify anyway.

-- 
Duy