Having imported a lot of files into Subversion (approx. 47500) in large import batches Subversion takes a long time to return the history log. As Windows users our primary interface to Subversion is TortoiseSVN which always does a verbose log so that it can show the list of files which changed at each revision. Given that a large file import is within the last 100 commits (the TortoiseSVN log limit) it takes several minutes to get a log listing. This is causing murmuring in the ranks because 'the ranks' quickly forget the pain of using CVS and think 'this used to be really fast in CVS' and sit at their computers muttering about the old days being much better.
Trac has come to the rescue. Trac rather handily keeps a cache of the Subversion log messages so the Trac source browser returns history listings very quickly.
Had this problem too
The good news is that after another 100 commits this problem goes away since the revision with the huge -v list isn't pulled any more.
But this problem has hit us too, and is one of the reasons we keep to svnserve.
-Nathan