The --prune option to fetch added in v1.6.5-8-gf360d84 seems to be around 20-30x slower than the equivalent operation with git remote prune. I'm wondering if I'm missing something and fetch does something more, but it doesn't seem so. To test this clone git.git, create 1000 branches it in, create two local clones of that clone and then delete the 1000 branches in the original. I have a script to do this at https://gist.github.com/avar/497c8c8fbd641fb756ef Then in each of the clones: $ git branch -a|wc -l; time (~/g/git/git-fetch --prune origin >/dev/null 2>&1); git branch -a | wc -l 1003 real 0m3.337s user 0m2.996s sys 0m0.336s 3 $ git branch -a|wc -l; time (~/g/git/git-remote prune origin >/dev/null 2>&1); git branch -a | wc -l 1003 real 0m0.067s user 0m0.020s sys 0m0.040s 3 Both of these ends up doing a "git fetch", so it's not that. I'm quite rusty in C profiling but here's a gprof of the git-fetch command: $ gprof ~/g/git/git-fetch|head -n 20 Flat profile: Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds. % cumulative self self total time seconds seconds calls s/call s/call name 26.42 0.33 0.33 1584583 0.00 0.00 strbuf_getwholeline 14.63 0.51 0.18 90601347 0.00 0.00 strbuf_grow 13.82 0.68 0.17 1045676 0.00 0.00 find_pack_entry_one 8.13 0.78 0.10 1050062 0.00 0.00 check_refname_format 6.50 0.86 0.08 1584675 0.00 0.00 get_sha1_hex 5.69 0.93 0.07 2100529 0.00 0.00 starts_with 3.25 0.97 0.04 1044043 0.00 0.00 refname_is_safe 3.25 1.01 0.04 8007 0.00 0.00 get_packed_ref_cache 2.44 1.04 0.03 2605595 0.00 0.00 search_ref_dir 2.44 1.07 0.03 1040500 0.00 0.00 peel_entry 1.63 1.09 0.02 2632661 0.00 0.00 get_ref_dir 1.63 1.11 0.02 1044043 0.00 0.00 create_ref_entry 1.63 1.13 0.02 8024 0.00 0.00 do_for_each_entry_in_dir 0.81 1.14 0.01 2155105 0.00 0.00 memory_limit_check 0.81 1.15 0.01 1580503 0.00 0.00 sha1_to_hex And of the git-remote command: $ gprof ~/g/git/git-remote|head -n 20 Flat profile: Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds. no time accumulated % cumulative self self total time seconds seconds calls Ts/call Ts/call name 0.00 0.00 0.00 197475 0.00 0.00 strbuf_grow 0.00 0.00 0.00 24214 0.00 0.00 sort_ref_dir 0.00 0.00 0.00 24190 0.00 0.00 search_ref_dir 0.00 0.00 0.00 21661 0.00 0.00 memory_limit_check 0.00 0.00 0.00 20236 0.00 0.00 get_ref_dir 0.00 0.00 0.00 9187 0.00 0.00 xrealloc 0.00 0.00 0.00 7048 0.00 0.00 strbuf_add 0.00 0.00 0.00 6348 0.00 0.00 do_xmalloc 0.00 0.00 0.00 6126 0.00 0.00 xcalloc 0.00 0.00 0.00 6056 0.00 0.00 cleanup_path 0.00 0.00 0.00 6050 0.00 0.00 get_git_dir 0.00 0.00 0.00 6050 0.00 0.00 vsnpath 0.00 0.00 0.00 5554 0.00 0.00 config_file_fgetc Aside from the slowness of git-fetch it seems git-remote can be sped up quite a bit by more aggressively allocating a larger string buffer from the get-go. -- 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