Starting the new year with [new git-annex development funding](https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/git-annex_and_funding_update/) for most of the things on the [[design/roadmap]]! Today was spent converting the UUID data type to use a ByteString, rather than a String, and also converting repo descriptions to ByteString. That's groundwork for reading and writing log files on the git-annex branch using attoparsec and ByteString builders, which will hopefully improve performance. Until that's complete, it will often convert a String to a ByteString and then back to a String, which could actually make performance slightly worse. Benchmarking `git annex whereis` doesn't find much of a change. It may have gotten a slightly faster overall, due to the faster Eq and Ord instances making the map of repositories faster.