SourceTree slowness on Windows

[Stuart Leyland]

I am finding that SourceTree on Windows 7 is incredibly slow to refresh after any action, whether that is staging a file, committing/pulling/pushing, refreshing after a tracked file has been updated, or pressing the commit button. Some details:

1. The laptop I'm using is well speced: i7, 8GB RAM, SSD so I don't think it is the problem.
2. I only have one repo in SourceTree which is 1GB on my local disk but 99% of that is in a folder which is ignored in .gitignore. I downloaded the repo as a zip file from Github, extracted it and it was 74MB. The repo is hosted on Github and but is private so I am unable to link it.
3. I am running version 1.4.1 but have experienced the same slowness on 1.4.0 and 1.3.3 (I downloaded these to test this problem).
4. The Xray unit testing framework () is included as a sub-module but the slowness pre-dates the inclusion of this.
5. I have 'Show pending' selected in the drop down menu.

I would love to get to the bottom of this issue because SourceTree is by far the best Git client I have ever come across. Please let me know if you require any further information.

[Seth]

Here is the related question, but that problem looks to be caused by a large quantity of submodules: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/252979/sourcetree-is-very-slow-on-windows-7

[Stuart Leyland]

Sorry I wasn't clear - my colleagues don't use SourceTree, they just use Git from the command line and it is snappy.

I ran git count-objects and there were just under 2000 objects totally around 2MB. Foolishly I closed the window before I got the exact numbers but they were in that region. I've run git gc but haven't noticed any improvement.

[Jeff Thomas]

On your colleagues' computers this repo is fast in both Git and SourceTree?

Could you run 'git count-objects' and share the results? This will show the number of unpacked objects that would be cleaned with 'git gc'. gc will clean up the repository by running a number of tasks that could improve performance. You may want to try running 'git gc' to see if that helps.

[Stuart Leyland]

I tried a few simple commands - add, and status - and they were slow but possibly not quite as slow as in the UI. Definitely a lot slower than I've seen on colleagues' identically speced computers with the same repo. I am using embedded Git - version 1.8.3.

[Jeff Thomas]

If you run some commands outside of SourceTree using Git, are they just as slow? That might narrow down the issue if it's something with Git and the Repository or just SourceTree. There is a Terminal button in the menu bar that will allow you to run some Git commands.

[Seth]

Atlassian monitors these forums to some degree, but you may get more direct attention on support.atlassian.com.

[Stuart Leyland]

Unofrtunately it is just as slow - lots of spinning circles while SourceTree does anything. I added a line to a file and to stage and commit that file took at least a minute. Any other suggestions? Do Atlassian monitor these forums or is there some other way to report issues to them?

[Seth]

Slowness on Windows has been reported before, but I've never seen it myself (Windows 8.1). The only significant difference between my repo(s) and yours is the submodule (which you already disqualified) and the Git ignore. Is it possible that SourceTree is getting bogged down attempting to filter ignored files?

Stuart, make a temporary copy of your repo and delete the .gitignore file, then try some operations to see if that makes a difference.