The --filter=sparse:<oid> option to 'git pack-objects' allows focusing
an object set to a sparse-checkout definition. This reduces the set of
matching blobs while retaining all reachable trees. No server currently
supports fetching with this filter because it is expensive to compute
and reachability bitmaps do not help without a significant effort to
extend the bitmap feature to store bitmaps for each supported sparse-
checkout definition.
Without focusing on serving fetches and clones with these filters, there
are still benefits that could be realized by making this faster. With
the sparse index, it's more realistic now than ever to be able to
operate a local clone that was bootstrapped by a packfile created with
a sparse filter, because the missing trees are not needed to move a
sparse-checkout from one commit to another or to view the history of any
path in scope. Such clones could perhaps be bootstrapped by partial
bundles.
Previously, constructing these sparse packs has been incredibly
computationally inefficient. The revision walk that explores which
objects are in scope spends a lot of time checking each object to see if
it matches the sparse-checkout patterns, causing quadratic behavior
(number of objects times number of sparse-checkout patterns). This
improves somewhat when using cone-mode sparse-checkout patterns that can
use hashtables and prefix matches to determine containment. However, the
check per object is still too expensive for most cases.
This is where the path-walk feature comes in. We can proceed as normal
by placing objects in bins by path and _then_ check a group of objects
all at once. Since sparse:<oid> only restricts blobs, the path-walk must
include all reachable trees while using the cone-mode patterns to skip
blobs at paths outside the sparse scope. This establishes a baseline for
a potential future "treesparse:<oid>" filter that would also restrict
trees, but introducing such a new filter is deferred to a later change.
The implementation here is focused around loading the sparse-checkout
patterns from the provided object ID and checking that the patterns are
indeed cone-mode patterns. We can then load the correct pattern list
into the path walk context and use the logic that already exists from
bff4555767 (backfill: add --sparse option, 2025-02-03), though that
feature loads sparse-checkout patterns from the worktree's local
settings and also restricts tree objects. We use a combination of errors
and warnings to signal problems during this load. The difference is that
errors are likely fatal for the non-path-walk version while the warnings
are probably just implementation details for the path-walk version and
the 'git pack-objects' command can fall back to the revision walk
version.
Now that the SEEN flag is deferred until after pattern checks (from the
previous commit), handle the case where a tree with a shared OID appears
at both an out-of-cone and in-cone path. When trees are not being pruned
(pl_sparse_trees == 0), the path-walk re-walks the tree at the in-cone
path so that in-cone blobs within it are discovered. The new tests in
t5317 and t6601 demonstrate this behavior and would fail without these
changes.
The performance test p5315 shows the impact of this change when using
sparse filters:
Test HEAD~1 HEAD
----------------------------------------------------------------------
5315.10: repack (sparse:oid) 77.98 77.47 -0.7%
5315.11: repack size (sparse:oid) 187.5M 187.4M -0.0%
5315.12: repack (sparse:oid, --path-walk) 77.91 31.41 -59.7%
5315.13: repack size (sparse:oid, --path-walk) 187.5M 161.1M -14.1%
These performance tests were run on the Git repository. The --path-walk
feature shows meaningful space savings (14% smaller for sparse packs)
and dramatic time savings (60% faster) by leveraging the path-walk's
ability to skip blobs outside the sparse scope.
Co-authored-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Signed-off-by: Taylor Blaue <me@ttaylorr.com>
Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2dc858e69e