# Re: git-svn: why fetching files is so slow

- From: Seth Falcon \<hidden\>
- Date: 2016-08-11 19:36:11 
- List: git
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/git/2016/08/7689004

```text
Pazu [ref] writes:
> ... compared to the standalone svn client. I'm working with repositories over
> the internet, using not-so-fast links, but still, a svn checkout takes somewhere
> around 5 to 10 minutes, while git-svn fetch takes at least 10 times that just to
> fetch the initial revision. Later fetches also take *a lot* more time than a svn
> update would.

[warning: I _think_ this is how it works, but not 100% sure]
When you use git-svn to fetch from an svn repository, you make a
separate request for each commit that occurred on the remote svn
repos.  When you use the svn client, it only needs to compute and
download one delta .

If you are not already using the Perl SVN bindings (you will need to
build svn from source), you should give them a try.  They are much
faster.

My experience has often been the opposite, but I think that is because
I work with an svn repository where I track a directory that has many
many subdirs.  The svn working copy traversal is so slow that even
with the extra network overhead, git + git-svn ends up being faster
for fetch (and much faster for any local operation).

```