Very slow west update

[Chris Pearson]

I'm having an issue with "west update" taking a very long time on a Windows 11 machine. (Multiple hours) This install of the nRF Connect SDK is just over one month old, and was done on a new Windows 11 install. 

Today, when looking at the notification pop-up on the right side of the status bar (bottom-right of VS Code), I noticed the message "The SDK is out of sync" and a link to "west update". I clicked that update link. What followed was a very slow update process that I terminated after two hours. I have to assume that this isn't intended behaviour, given that simply reinstalling the nRF Connect SDK is far, far faster. 

Looking at the output from "west update", a problem appears to be shown by the repeated messages "Auto packing the repository in background for optimum performance". Each of these messages was followed by a lengthy delay.

The output I saw, up to the point I cancelled the "west update", is in this Onedrive file: 1drv.ms/.../s!ApV4t-ortvt8jaQongwVUHcRApxEow

Is this expected behaviour, or is there something wrong?

Thanks!

[Menon]

Hello,

Are you inside any company firewall? It doesn't make sense that reinstalling is faster while the West update is slow. Have you noticed if the entire VSCode is running slowly?

I don't see any potential cause for the issue you've raised, but I might need to check this internally.

Kind regards,
Abhijith

[Chris Pearson]

No, there's no company firewall blocking this machine. All my internet activities seem to be normal.

The reinstall of the nRF Connect SDK (the toolchain and SDK code steps) were about what I expected for speed, as well. A few minutes, tops, and nothing like the hours the update was taking.

From my point of view, the problem seemed to be related to the excessive git garbage collection / auto packing of the repositories. Presumably this doesn't need to happen so many times during a single update. Unfortunately, not knowing the underlying system, that's about as far as I can guess.