git-annex uses FilePath (String) extensively. That's a slow data type. Converting to ByteString, and RawFilePath, should speed it up significantly, according to [[/profiling]]. I've made a test branch, `bs`, to see what kind of performance improvement to expect. Benchmarking `git-annex find`, speedups range from 28-66%. The files fly by much more snappily. Other commands likely also speed up, but do more work than find so the improvement is not as large. The `bs` branch is in a mergeable state now, but still needs work: * Profile various commands and look for hot spots. * ByteString.Char8.putStrLn may truncate? * Eliminate all the fromRawFilePath, toRawFilePath, encodeBS, decodeBS conversions. Or at least most of them. There are likely some places where a value is converted back and forth several times. * Use versions of IO actions like getFileStatus that take a RawFilePath, avoiding a conversion. Note that these are only available on unix, not windows, so a compatability shim will be needed. (I can't seem to find any library that provides one.)