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+Feeding git-annex a long list off directories, eg with xargs can have
+2 bad behaviors:
+
+* git-annex runs git ls-files and passes it the same long list. But the git
+  ls-files command is longer than the git-annex command often, so it gets
+  truncated and some files are not processed.
+
+* It can take a really long time for git-annex to chew through the
+  git-ls-files results. There is probably an exponential blowup in the time
+  relative to the number of parameters. Some of the stuff being done to
+  preserve original ordering etc is likely at fault.