Re: gitk startup time improvement

[Alex Riesen <raa.lkml@gmail.com>]

Paul Mackerras, Thu, Aug 30, 2007 14:01:13 +0200:
> In the 'dev' branch of the gitk.git repository at
> 
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/gitk/gitk.git
> 
> there is now a version of gitk that is much faster at starting up than
> the standard version.  Firstly, it doesn't lay out the whole graph,
> only the parts that get displayed (plus a little bit either side), and
> secondly, it caches the topology information that is used to determine
> which tags a commit precedes and follows, and which branches it is on.
> 
> I'd like people to try it.  Comments, bug reports, patches etc. are
> welcome, of course.

Well, it works. The improvements are not very noticeable, though (I
tried git and kernel repos). Besides, there is a slight delay (~1-2
sec) in kernel repo (writing the cache out?) on exit.

I used gitk from this commit:

    commit 5cd15b6b7f87dc61f729ad31a682ffc394560273
    Author: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
    Date:   Thu Aug 30 21:54:17 2007 +1000

	gitk: Add a cache for the topology info

BTW, what should happen if I try running many gitks in the same repo?
Is the cache safe for concurrent writing by them? Is it NFS-safe?