Blinks theme hangs on large Git repositories

[slhck]

I have oh-my-zsh from Mar. 20th (latest) and use the Blinks theme.

I'm working in a semi-large repository (thousands of files), and as soon as I cd into that repo, the shell hangs. I cannot ctrl-z it, but I have to restart.

Changing to the default (no) theme fixes it for me. In other (smaller) repositories, it works fine.

Reproduced with:

• Git version 2.1.4 on Windows (Cygwin)
• Git 1.9.1 on Linux Mint
• Git 2.3.4 on Linux Mint

[apjanke]

This is probably just that git status can be slow for large repositories, and the prompt for the Blinks theme includes git status output. To verify this, switch to a non-git-displaying theme like cypher or no theme, and do a time git status inside that repo.

As a workaround, you can set the git config oh-my-zsh.hide-status 1 option in that repo, as mcornella suggests in #3706. This will disable the git status check in that repo specifically for all themes that use it.

[slhck]

Works nicely, thanks!

Should we still keep this open? I don't know if there's a sensible way to make the function time out if it takes too long... or any alternative solution.

[apjanke]

Nah, just close it. There's an existing issue #3009 for the general "git status is slow" problem.

It would be possible to add a timeout, but that would probably require writing an asynchronous git wrapper that uses the git program in a client-server mode (and is portable to Windows). Might be possible with zsh's coprocess support, but would require some work. Could be worth it though; this is a periodic problem.

[slhck]

Closed as dupe of #3009

Thanks, Andrew.

[apjanke]

Hey, is this a public repo that I could use as a test case for doing a git status timeout? Or do you know of another really big one that is slow?

[slhck]

The only thing that comes to mind is the Linux kernel, but I don't know if it's that slow to work with. It probably has lots of small files rather than large files (which is where Git's performance decreases).

(I cannot share the original repo, sorry…)

[apjanke]

I'll just stick it behind an NFS share; that's sure to be slow enough. :) Thanks!

[apjanke]

HA! The coproc/read -p -t seems to work: #3725.