Huge delay while opening the git diff view while merging huge changes

[Palanikannan1437]

Summary

There's a huge delay when opening the multi buffer git view while merging branches/etc

Screen.Recording.2025-09-03.at.11.19.08.AM.mov

Description

I've been absolutely loving Zed and the incredible work you've all been doing! However, I'm experiencing a significant performance issue with the multi-buffer git view during merge operations that's making conflict resolution quite challenging.

When opening the multi-buffer git view while merging branches (especially in larger repositories), there's a huge delay that makes the feature practically unusable. The delay appears to be caused by loading all changed files simultaneously, even when I only need to focus on files with actual merge conflicts.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create or switch to a branch with many file changes
2. Initiate a merge that results in conflicts (e.g., git merge feature-branch)
3. Open the multi-buffer git view in Zed
4. Experience significant delay/freezing while all files load

Expected Behavior:

The multi-buffer view should load quickly and allow immediate interaction, ideally with one of these approaches:

• Only load files with actual merge conflicts by default
• Implement dynamic/lazy loading as the user scrolls through the file list
• Provide an option to filter the view to conflict-only files

Actual Behavior:

The multi-buffer view takes an extremely long time to load when there are many changed files, making conflict resolution workflows inefficient.

Suggested Solutions:

1. Add a filter option to show only files with merge conflicts
2. Implement virtualized/dynamic rendering for the multi-buffer view
3. Add progressive loading as the user scrolls

I'd be happy to contribute to implementing this if it's a relatively small change! The codebase looks well-structured and this seems like it could be a great learning opportunity.

Thanks again for building such an amazing editor! 🚀

Zed Version and System Specs

Zed: v0.201.9 (Zed)
OS: macOS 15.5.0
Memory: 18 GiB
Architecture: aarch64

[zelosleone]

I think

Add a filter option to show only files with merge conflicts

would be the correct approach here but this problem is about your SSD struggling with these git changes in general. Any editor would give the same problem with that many file changes. But if it's about merging conflicts i think there should be an option to make them appear as "Merge Conflicts" and focus on them while making the other changes stay in background without showing their diff unless explicitly clicked/viewed.

[Palanikannan1437]

Thanks @zelosleone, this is what most editors do too!

Perhaps, but I think editors like VSCode were able to handle the same thing, by using the filtering approach, and even TUI implementationa like Lazygit were able to handle merging with ease, so I'm not sure if it's the SSD struggling with the git operation most probably.