Re: gitk startup time improvement

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 [off-list ref]
    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?