[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="arand"
 ip="130.243.226.21"
 subject="comment 3"
 date="2013-08-10T17:00:21Z"
 content="""
So, if I've understood it correctly (please correct me if that's not the case :) )

Currently git-annex unused goes through this process

* Look through all files in the index and find those which are git-annex keys (git ls-tree + git cat-file)
* Look through all files the current ref and find those which are git-annex keys (git ls-tree + git cat-file)
* For each ref in the repo
  - Look through all files and find those which are git-annex keys (git ls-tree + git cat-file)
* Then at the end
  - Compare this list of keys with what is stored in .git/annex/objects
  - Print out any objects which does not match a key.

If that's the case, it means if that if you have multiple refs, even is they only differ by single empty commits, git-annex will end up doing a cat-file for the same file multiple times (one per ref), which is expensive.

Would it be possible to change the algorithm for git-annex unused into instead something like:

* For the index, HEAD, and all refs
  - Create a list all files and remove those which are duplicates based on their sha1 hash (git ls-tree | uniq)
* Then Look through this reduced list to find those which are git-annex keys (git cat-file)
* Then check as before

Unless this bypasses some safety or case I've overlooked, I think it should be possible to speed up git-annex unused quite a bit.

"""]]