The naive approach for caching ignore files is commented
https://github.com/albfan/nerdtree-git-plugin/blob/master/nerdtree_plugin/git_status.vim#L107
See if this is really a bottle neck caching based on content using system sha1sum or incorporating sha1 vim implementation
https://github.com/vim-scripts/sha1.vim
The naive approach for caching ignore files is commented
https://github.com/albfan/nerdtree-git-plugin/blob/master/nerdtree_plugin/git_status.vim#L107
See if this is really a bottle neck caching based on content using system sha1sum or incorporating sha1 vim implementation
https://github.com/vim-scripts/sha1.vim