Good idea. New steps to reproduce: ~ $ git clone git://slonopotamus.org/git-diff Cloning into git-diff... remote: Counting objects: 6, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done. remote: Total 6 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0) Receiving objects: 100% (6/6), 478.87 KiB | 722 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (1/1), done. ~ $ cd git-diff ~/git-diff $ time git diff HEAD^ > /dev/null real 0m6.585s user 0m6.540s sys 0m0.040s ~/git-diff $ time git diff --patience HEAD^ > /dev/null real 0m0.259s user 0m0.220s sys 0m0.030s -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html