From: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>
To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Subject: [PATCH] new: Don't scan unchanged directories with no sub-directories
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:33:42 -0400
Message-Id: <1382646822-24556-1-git-send-email-amdragon@mit.edu>
Precedence: list

This can substantially reduce the cost of notmuch new in some
situations, such as when the file system cache is cold or when the
Maildir is on NFS.
---
 notmuch-new.c | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+)

diff --git a/notmuch-new.c b/notmuch-new.c
index faa33f1..364c73a 100644
--- a/notmuch-new.c
+++ b/notmuch-new.c
@@ -323,6 +323,26 @@ add_files (notmuch_database_t *notmuch,
     }
     db_mtime = directory ? notmuch_directory_get_mtime (directory) : 0;
 
+    /* If the directory is unchanged from our last scan and has no
+     * sub-directories, then return without scanning it at all.  In
+     * some situations, skipping the scan can substantially reduce the
+     * cost of notmuch new, especially since the huge numbers of files
+     * in Maildirs make scans expensive, but all files live in leaf
+     * directories.
+     *
+     * To check for sub-directories, we borrow a trick from find,
+     * kpathsea, and many other UNIX tools: since a directory's link
+     * count is the number of sub-directories (specifically, their
+     * '..' entries) plus 2 (the link from the parent and the link for
+     * '.').  This check is safe even on weird file systems, since
+     * file systems that can't compute this will return 0 or 1.  This
+     * is safe even on *really* weird file systems like HFS+ that
+     * mistakenly return the total number of directory entries, since
+     * that only inflates the count beyond 2.
+     */
+    if (directory && fs_mtime == db_mtime && st.st_nlink == 2)
+	goto DONE;
+
     /* If the database knows about this directory, then we sort based
      * on strcmp to match the database sorting. Otherwise, we can do
      * inode-based sorting for faster filesystem operation. */
-- 
1.8.4.rc3