Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:
Side note: I also have a feeling that any operation that cares about
non-object sha1 performance is probably ripe for other, bigger
optimizations. If you update 300MB worth of index entries, then the
cost of computing a checksum over it isn't a big deal. But if you have
a 300MB index file and you update one entry (or you just want to read
one entry), maybe we ought to consider solutions that don't involve
the whole 300MB in the first place. I know that's a much harder change
because it may involve new on-disk formats. But it seems like that's
the right long-term path forward.
Yes ;-)