I wonder if the problem detected here is also responsible with results
of Jeremy Blosser benchmark comparing git with Mercurial
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/sm-discuss/2006-May/014586.html
where git wins for clone, status and log, but is slower for pull.
See summary at
http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitBenchmarks#head-85df1bb7f019c4c504e34cde43450ef69349882f
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Jakub Narebski