GNU bug report logs - #78194
`guix pull --list-generations' is extremely slow

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Package: guix;

Reported by: Ian Eure <ian <at> retrospec.tv>

Date: Thu, 1 May 2025 15:36:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Andreas Enge <andreas <at> enge.fr>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

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From: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
To: Ian Eure <ian <at> retrospec.tv>
Cc: 78194 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#78194: `guix pull --list-generations' is extremely slow
Date: Wed, 14 May 2025 18:33:35 +0200

Hi,

Ian Eure <ian <at> retrospec.tv> writes:

> I’ve been frustrated by this before, but decided to measure things:
>
> `guix home list-generations' takes 3.535s to list 28 items.
> `guix system list-generations' takes 1.406s to list 35 items.
> `guix pull --list-generations' takes 232.599s to list 41 items.
>
> Why is `guix pull --list-generations' >100x slower than `guix system
> list-generations'?

Because for each pair of generations, it shows the corresponding news
entries (as per ‘guix pull --news’), and that part is quite expensive
because it involves a Git log traversal.

I think we should (1) optimize the news code (that’s
‘channel-news-for-commit’), and (2) if that’s not enough consider
keeping it off by default in ‘guix pull --list-generations’.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.
This bug report was last modified 35 days ago.

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