This has been causing a significant performance regression,
to the point where AUH wasn't able to complete upgrades with
particularly large number of git commits between releases [1].
After discussing with Peter [2], running 'oe-selftest -r devtool' with this change (100% pass),
and also doing an AUH run with it, and reviewing the output I think this is fine to remove:
the case is either very niche or non-existent, and if it appears again, we
should come up with a better fix.