slowness in pulling data to mobile devices using git

hi list

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask. I am having
some difficulties to speed up synchronization of a large git
repo (~4GB) to a mobile phone via USB cable. It appears that
the "git pull" command has to read through the entire
history to make a single update, even the update is very
minor.

I post my full question at this link:

http://groups.google.com/group/git-users/browse_thread/thread/9f33536257535b28?hl=en

does this make sense? is there a way to speed up
the updating without letting git to do all the file readings?

thanks

Qianqian

On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, Qianqian Fang wrote:

hi list

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask.

Yes, it is.

I am having some difficulties to speed up synchronization of a large 
git repo (~4GB) to a mobile phone via USB cable. It appears that the 
"git pull" command has to read through the entire history to make a 
single update, even the update is very minor.

I post my full question at this link:

http://groups.google.com/group/git-users/browse_thread/thread/9f33536257535b28?hl=en

does this make sense? is there a way to speed up
the updating without letting git to do all the file readings?

try doing "git fetch" instead of "git pull".  That should make the 
actual transfer faster without looking at the local checked-out files.

Also, make sure the repository on your SD card is fully packed.  You'll 
need to repack it by mounting the SD card on a PC with sufficient amount 
of RAM.

If the repo is checked out on your SD card, and if it contains a large 
number of files, then any status-like operation (checkout, pull) will 
need to stat every file which may take time on a slow storage link.  
And if your phone changes the dates of those files then Git has no 
choice but to read the entire file in order to determine if the file is 
still the same or not.


Nicolas