avoiding scans of whole directory tree

[Jamie Webb]

On 2008-05-28 14:04:23 Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
> On 28.05.2008 13:39, Jamie Webb wrote:
> > I tried to use hg to manage '/' once. I gave up, because even 'hg
> > commit' scans the entire workspace, even if few files have been
> > added. I used git instead.
> 
> And how does git solve the problem? By using the equivalent of that
> proposed "hg edit" command?

No, git scans only the files that are actually being tracked.

(Actually, 'git add' on its own does behave a little like the proposed
'hg edit', but this is irrelevant because I'm talking about 'git commit
-a', which is equivalent to 'hg commit'.)

> > (In case you're going to try to tell me this was a bad idea, no it's
> > not. This is for a fairly specialised server appliance setup, where
> > I want to keep a very tight control of how the system changes.)
> 
> I don't tell you anything. I just try to understand why that
> "hg edit" command Mohit is proposing should be needed.

I'm talking about a slightly different thing. In the absence of
inotify, 'hg edit' might help if the manifest is truly huge. But hg is
worse than that: it slows right down if the workspace is large, even if
the manifest is small.

/J