Re: git branch performance problem?

["Lars Hjemli" <hjemli@gmail.com>]

On 10/10/07, Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwenn@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/10/10, Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwenn@gmail.com>:
> > > You probably want to run 'git gc' (which will run 'git pack-refs',
> > > i.e. put all files currently under .git/refs into a single file). This
> > > should speed up 'git branch' (and quite possibly other commands too).
> >
> > This seems rather unuseful. After running gc pack-refs --all, I lost my HEAD,
> >
> > hanwen@lilypond:~/vc/git5$ git show HEAD
> > fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD': unknown revision or path not in the
> > working tree.
>
> More to the point, I seemed to have lost my entire repository. This is
> the type of surprise  I don't enjoy.

Yeah, this is bad, I'm sorry to have caused you trouble. But I fail to
see how 'git pack-refs --all' could possibly trash your repository. A
few questions:

What version of git are you using?
What's the output from these commands:
$ cat .git/packed-refs
$ cat .git/HEAD
$ find .git/refs -type f | wc -l

> Now, can someone explain why 'git branch' takes forever if there are
> only two non-remote branches ?

That's because git-branch always traverses the complete directory tree
below .git/refs, even if you only want to see the 'local' branches (I
have a patch cooking to fix this).

--
larsh