Summary

When using hk with a bare-repo dotfile manager (YADM) where GIT_WORK_TREE=$HOME, hk hangs for ~45 seconds on every invocation because it runs git status --porcelain --untracked-files=all -z, which scans the entire home directory.

Environment

• hk v1.44.0
• macOS (darwin arm64)
• Git 2.54.0
• YADM bare repo with GIT_DIR=~/.local/share/yadm/repo.git and GIT_WORK_TREE=~
• The yadm repo has status.showUntrackedFiles = no in its git config

Reproduction

# Set up yadm context
export GIT_DIR=~/.local/share/yadm/repo.git
export GIT_WORK_TREE=~

# Any hk command that needs file status hangs for ~45s:
hk check --all --step trailing-whitespace
hk check --plan
hk run pre-commit

Root Cause

With --trace -v, hk shows:

DEBUG $ git update-index -q --refresh
DEBUG $ git status --porcelain --untracked-files=all -z

The --untracked-files=all flag overrides the repo's status.showUntrackedFiles = no setting. When the work tree is $HOME, this scans hundreds of thousands of files and produces ~214MB of output.

# This is what hk runs internally (~45s, 214MB output):
time git status --porcelain --untracked-files=all -z | wc -c
#  214671911
# real 41.575s

# This is what the repo is configured for (<0.2s):
time git status --porcelain -z | wc -c
#  500
# real 0.144s

Expected Behavior

hk should respect the repo's status.showUntrackedFiles setting, or at least not force --untracked-files=all when the work tree is a home directory. Alternatively, a config option like stash_untracked = false could skip untracked file discovery.

Workaround Attempted

• HK_LIBGIT2=false — same behavior (shell git also called with --untracked-files=all)
• HK_STASH_UNTRACKED=false env var — no effect on the git status call
• Repo config status.showUntrackedFiles = no — overridden by the explicit --untracked-files=all flag

Context

This was discovered during migration from pre-commit to hk for a YADM dotfiles repo. #831 added GIT_DIR/GIT_WORK_TREE support in v1.44.0, which works for repo discovery, but the status scan makes it impractical for $HOME work trees.