# tag storage format

3 messages from 2012-10-22 to 2012-10-23. Participants: Uri Moszkowicz, Andreas Schwab.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/31908

## Uri Moszkowicz, 2012-10-22 22:23

Subject: tag storage format
Message-ID: <CAMJd5ATiAx09eAEo1=6+=hPv=5c6qtOiLRG5jrQn5dfCKUrvMQ@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAMJd5ATiAx09eAEo1%3D6%2B%3DhPv%3D5c6qtOiLRG5jrQn5dfCKUrvMQ%40mail.gmail.com

```
I'm doing some testing on a large Git repository and am finding local
clones to take a very long time. After some investigation I've
determined that the problem is due to a very large number of tags
(~38k). Even with hard links, it just takes a really long time to
visit that many inodes. As it happens, I don't care for most of these
tags and will prune many of them anyway but I expect that over time it
will creep back up again. Have others reported this problem before and
is there a workaround? Perhaps Git should switch to a single-file
block text or binary format once a large number of tags becomes
present in a repository.

```

## Andreas Schwab, 2012-10-22 22:46

Subject: Re: tag storage format
Message-ID: <m2vce2xh06.fsf@igel.home>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/m2vce2xh06.fsf%40igel.home
In-Reply-To: <CAMJd5ATiAx09eAEo1=6+=hPv=5c6qtOiLRG5jrQn5dfCKUrvMQ@mail.gmail.com>

```
Uri Moszkowicz <uri@4refs.com> writes:

> Perhaps Git should switch to a single-file block text or binary format
> once a large number of tags becomes present in a repository.

This is what git pack-refs (called by git gc) does (by putting the refs
in .git/packed-refs).

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

```

## Uri Moszkowicz, 2012-10-23 18:28

Subject: Re: tag storage format
Message-ID: <CAMJd5AQxowh+XHbZzt9-=DhbYpKkozxNacxxi_KmVDuxMXsD7A@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAMJd5AQxowh%2BXHbZzt9-%3DDhbYpKkozxNacxxi_KmVDuxMXsD7A%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <m2vce2xh06.fsf@igel.home>

```
That did the trick - thanks!

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 5:46 PM, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
>
> Uri Moszkowicz <uri@4refs.com> writes:
>
> > Perhaps Git should switch to a single-file block text or binary format
> > once a large number of tags becomes present in a repository.
>
> This is what git pack-refs (called by git gc) does (by putting the refs
> in .git/packed-refs).
>
> Andreas.
>
> --
> Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
> GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
> "And now for something completely different."

```