threads / discuss / 2275

Tracking few files among many

Subject: Tracking few files among many

## tl;dr

3 messages between Oct 30, 2005 and Oct 30, 2005.

replies: 2people: 2as markdown or json

Peter Eriksen· Oct 30, 2005, 13:00 UTC · lore

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? I'm using 46774a81f9d6ca4d230d33757afe9dd07bfe398b (GIT 0.99.9).

Regards,

Peter

Andreas Ericsson· Oct 30, 2005, 15:29 UTC · re: Peter Eriksen · lore

Re: Tracking few files among many

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

Peter Eriksen· Oct 30, 2005, 15:52 UTC · re: Andreas Ericsson · lore

Re: Tracking few files among many

On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 04:29:27PM +0100, Andreas Ericsson wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Peter Eriksen wrote:
> >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:

...

> 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.

I understand now, I just didn't think about this behavior before. What I could do is add all my files to .gitignore, but that would be insane.

Perhaps I was just confused about it calling those files "not tracked". I know, I know, it was changed recently to this exactly because it was confusing before.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Peter