[darcs-devel] darcs status is slow (when there are loads of untracked files)

[Ben Franksen]

Daniil Frumin wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 7:45 PM, Ganesh Sittampalam <ganesh at earth.li>
> wrote:
>> On 06/05/2015 11:07, Dan Frumin wrote:
>>
>>> Apologies if this issue has already been raised in a more eloquent
>>> manner.
>>>
>>> I've noticed recently that on some repositories `darcs status' take a
>>> loooooong time to finish. I've manage to narrow down the problem to
>>> having a '.cabal-sandbox' directory (that was not included in the
>>> .boringfile) with loads and loads of files.
>>>
>>> One way to avoid this problem would be to add (reinstall?) the
>>> --non-recursive option to whatsnew. But I am actually not entirely
>>> sure of that solution. Ideally, I want darcs status to tell me that
>>> ".cabal-sandbox" is available, but not tracked by darcs. This is the
>>> default git behaviour, and 'git status' is very fast. Of course, IIRC,
>>> darcs does *not* operate on the level of directories, so that might be
>>> tricky.
>>
>> FWIW darcs knows about directories more than git does - it actively
>> tracks them with add/remove/rename patches.
>>
>> At the moment 'darcs status' lists all the files in an untracked
>> directory. Are you proposing changing the output so it just lists the
>> directory and nothing else?
>>
> 
> Moreover, I don't think darcs should even recurse into those
> directories, as it makes the command slower.
> 
> 
>> If so I think that's a reasonable change to make, just wanted to check
>> that's what you meant.

Just to make sure I understand correctly: The proposal is to make darcs 
whatsnew -ls (and perhaps other commands that support -ls) not recurse into 
untracked directories?

That sounds quite reasonable indeed, since darcs does not allow you to add 
files before you added the directory that contains them. If the user intends 
to add some of those files she can first add the directory and then re-run 
to get the contents listed.

It would help if someone could make a ticket so we don't forget this.

Cheers
Ben
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