Most of the commands in git-update-ref(1) accept an old and/or new
object ID to update a specific reference to. These object IDs get parsed
via `repo_get_oid()`, which not only handles plain object IDs, but also
those that have a suffix like "~" or "^2". More surprisingly though, it
even knows to resolve arbitrary revisions, despite the fact that its
manpage does not mention this fact even once.
One consequence of this is that we also check for ambiguous references:
when parsing a full object ID where the DWIM mechanism would also cause
us to resolve it as a branch, we'd end up printing a warning. While this
check makes sense to have in general, it is arguably less useful in the
context of git-update-ref(1). This is due to multiple reasons:
- The manpage is explicitly structured around object IDs. So if we see
a fully blown object ID, the intent should be quite clear in
general.
- The command is part of our plumbing layer and not a tool that users
would generally use in interactive workflows. As such, the warning
will likely not be visible to anybody in the first place.
- Users can and should use the fully-qualified refname in case there
is any potential for ambiguity. And given that this command is part
of our plumbing layer, one should always try to be as defensive as
possible and use fully-qualified refnames.
Furthermore, this check can be quite expensive when updating lots of
references via `--stdin`, because we try to read multiple references per
object ID that we parse according to the DWIM rules. This effect can be
seen both with the "files" and "reftable" backend.
The issue is not unique to git-update-ref(1), but was also an issue in
git-cat-file(1), where it was addressed by disabling the ambiguity check
in 25fba78d36 (cat-file: disable object/refname ambiguity check for
batch mode, 2013-07-12).
Disable the warning in git-update-ref(1), which provides a significant
speedup with both backends. The user-visible outcome is unchanged even
when ambiguity exists, except that we don't show the warning anymore.
The following benchmark creates 10000 new references with a 100000
preexisting refs with the "files" backend:
Benchmark 1: update-ref: create many refs (refformat = files, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD~)
Time (mean ± σ): 467.3 ms ± 5.1 ms [User: 100.0 ms, System: 365.1 ms]
Range (min … max): 461.9 ms … 479.3 ms 10 runs
Benchmark 2: update-ref: create many refs (refformat = files, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD)
Time (mean ± σ): 394.1 ms ± 5.8 ms [User: 63.3 ms, System: 327.6 ms]
Range (min … max): 384.9 ms … 405.7 ms 10 runs
Summary
update-ref: create many refs (refformat = files, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD) ran
1.19 ± 0.02 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refformat = files, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD~)
And with the "reftable" backend:
Benchmark 1: update-ref: create many refs (refformat = reftable, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD~)
Time (mean ± σ): 146.9 ms ± 2.2 ms [User: 90.4 ms, System: 56.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 142.7 ms … 150.8 ms 19 runs
Benchmark 2: update-ref: create many refs (refformat = reftable, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD)
Time (mean ± σ): 63.2 ms ± 1.1 ms [User: 41.0 ms, System: 21.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 61.1 ms … 66.6 ms 41 runs
Summary
update-ref: create many refs (refformat = reftable, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD) ran
2.32 ± 0.05 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refformat = reftable, preexisting = 100000, new = 10000, revision = HEAD~)
Note that the absolute improvement with both backends is roughly in the
same ballpark, but the relative improvement for the "reftable" backend
is more significant because writing the new table to disk is faster in
the first place.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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