I have a small Git repository, using Atlassian Stash. The repo has bout 250 files, not much history, and the files are all small - total repo size is about 10MB.

Git pull (returning just "Already up-to-date") in many cases over 8 seconds.

With GIT_TRACE set, the following is shown:

23:35:25.109710 git.c:555 trace: exec: 'git-pull'
23:35:25.109745 run-command.c:351 trace: run_command: 'git-pull'
23:35:25.122176 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' '--git-dir'
23:35:25.131460 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' '--is-bare-repository'
23:35:25.132926 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' '--show-toplevel'
23:35:25.134679 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'ls-files' '-u'
23:35:25.136349 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'symbolic-ref' '-q' 'HEAD'
23:35:25.139419 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'config' 'branch.master.rebase'
23:35:25.142520 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'config' 'pull.rebase'
23:35:25.144089 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'config' 'pull.ff'
23:35:25.145995 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' 'q' '-verify' 'HEAD'
23:35:25.147660 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'fetch' '--update-head-ok'
23:35:25.148347 run-command.c:351 trace: run_command: 'ssh' '-p' '7999' 'git@smsvcs' 'git-upload-pack '\''/srm/srm.git'\'''
23:35:31.758436 run-command.c:351 trace: run_command: 'rev-list' '-objects' 'stdin' 'not' 'all' '-quiet'
23:35:31.761165 run-command.c:351 trace: run_command: 'rev-list' '-objects' 'stdin' 'not' '-all'
23:35:31.761307 exec_cmd.c:129 trace: exec: 'git' 'rev-list' '-objects' 'stdin' 'not' '-all'
23:35:31.762459 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'rev-list' '-objects' 'stdin' 'not' '-all'
23:35:33.806938 run-command.c:351 trace: run_command: 'gc' '--auto'
23:35:33.807048 exec_cmd.c:129 trace: exec: 'git' 'gc' '--auto'
23:35:33.808245 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'gc' '--auto'
23:35:33.809709 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' 'q' '-verify' 'HEAD'
23:35:33.813711 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'fmt-merge-msg'
23:35:33.818468 git.c:346 trace: built-in: git 'merge' 'Merge branch '\''master'\'' of ssh://smsvcs:7999/srm/srm' 'HEAD' 'f77e569b202ef7674dc30d219e71b2587e87f708'
Already up-to-date.

The biggest delay seems to happen at 23:35:25.148347, while it's running git-upload-pack over SSH (it takes over 6.5 seconds).

SSH connection is pretty fast:

=->time ssh xyz@smsvcs 'echo test'
test

real 0m0.136s
user 0m0.009s
sys 0m0.001s

Second biggest delay is at 23:35:33.806938, and it's 2 seconds - running rev-list.