Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:
For example, while git now does "annotate" (or "blame"), it's not
lightning fast, and I simply don't care. Doing a
git blame kernel/sched.c
takes about three seconds for me, and that's on a pretty good machine (and
on the kernel tree, which for me is always in the cache ;).
ll.6041-6091 of that file is blamed to arch/ia64/kernel/domain.c
by pickaxe -C (attributed to commit 2.6.12-rc2) while blame says
they are brought in by commit 9c1cfa, which says "Move the ia64
domain setup code to the generic code". I am slowly realizing
that comparing the output from blame and pickaxe might be a good
way to study the project history.