Log Filter Performance Limits in TortoiseGit for Large Repositories

Goal

Use TortoiseGit's Show Log dialog to filter commit history by author and date range in order to locate specific changes quickly.

Constraints and Uncertainty

TortoiseGit's log viewer relies on the underlying Git binary and can experience performance degradation when processing repositories with millions of commits. The exact point at which filtering becomes noticeably slow is not documented, and it is unclear whether version mismatches between TortoiseGit and Git for Windows influence this behavior.

Additionally, the effectiveness of built‑in limits (e.g., restricting the displayed commit count) in mitigating slowdown while preserving needed history is uncertain.

Questions:

• At what approximate commit count does log filtering latency exceed acceptable interactive thresholds?
• Does applying a commit‑count limit in the Log dialog reduce latency without discarding relevant history for typical debugging workflows?
• Are specific version combinations of TortoiseGit and Git for Windows known to worsen or improve the filtering performance in large repositories?