Back in e37d0b8730 (builtin/index-pack.c: write reverse indexes,
2021-01-25), Git learned how to read and write a pack's reverse index
from a file instead of in-memory.
A pack's reverse index is a mapping from pack position (that is, the
order that objects appear together in a ".pack") to their position in
lexical order (that is, the order that objects are listed in an ".idx"
file).
Reverse indexes are consulted often during pack-objects, as well as
during auxiliary operations that require mapping between pack offsets,
pack order, and index index.
They are useful in GitHub's infrastructure, where we have seen a
dramatic increase in performance when writing ".rev" files[1]. In
particular:
- an ~80% reduction in the time it takes to serve fetches on a popular
repository, Homebrew/homebrew-core.
- a ~60% reduction in the peak memory usage to serve fetches on that
same repository.
- a collective savings of ~35% in CPU time across all pack-objects
invocations serving fetches across all repositories in a single
datacenter.
Reverse indexes are also beneficial to end-users as well as forges. For
example, the time it takes to generate a pack containing the objects for
the 10 most recent commits in linux.git (representing a typical push) is
significantly faster when on-disk reverse indexes are available:
$ { git rev-parse HEAD && printf '^' && git rev-parse HEAD~10 } >in
$ hyperfine -L v false,true 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex={v} pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'
Benchmark 1: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 543.0 ms ± 20.3 ms [User: 616.2 ms, System: 58.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 521.0 ms … 577.9 ms 10 runs
Benchmark 2: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 245.0 ms ± 11.4 ms [User: 335.6 ms, System: 31.3 ms]
Range (min … max): 226.0 ms … 259.6 ms 13 runs
Summary
'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null' ran
2.22 ± 0.13 times faster than 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'
The same is true of writing a pack containing the objects for the 30
most-recent commits:
$ { git rev-parse HEAD && printf '^' && git rev-parse HEAD~30 } >in
$ hyperfine -L v false,true 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex={v} pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'
Benchmark 1: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 866.5 ms ± 16.2 ms [User: 1414.5 ms, System: 97.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 839.3 ms … 886.9 ms 10 runs
Benchmark 2: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 581.6 ms ± 10.2 ms [User: 1181.7 ms, System: 62.6 ms]
Range (min … max): 567.5 ms … 599.3 ms 10 runs
Summary
'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null' ran
1.49 ± 0.04 times faster than 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'
...and savings on trivial operations like computing the on-disk size of
a single (packed) object are even more dramatic:
$ git rev-parse HEAD >in
$ hyperfine -L v false,true 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex={v} cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in'
Benchmark 1: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in
Time (mean ± σ): 305.8 ms ± 11.4 ms [User: 264.2 ms, System: 41.4 ms]
Range (min … max): 290.3 ms … 331.1 ms 10 runs
Benchmark 2: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in
Time (mean ± σ): 4.0 ms ± 0.3 ms [User: 1.7 ms, System: 2.3 ms]
Range (min … max): 1.6 ms … 4.6 ms 1155 runs
Summary
'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in' ran
76.96 ± 6.25 times faster than 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in'
In the more than two years since e37d0b8730 was merged, Git's
implementation of on-disk reverse indexes has been thoroughly tested,
both from users enabling `pack.writeReverseIndexes`, and from GitHub's
deployment of the feature. The latter has been running without incident
for more than two years.
This patch changes Git's behavior to write on-disk reverse indexes by
default when indexing a pack, which should make the above operations
faster for everybody's Git installation after a repack.
(The previous commit explains some potential drawbacks of using on-disk
reverse indexes in certain limited circumstances, that essentially boil
down to a trade-off between time to generate, and time to access. For
those limited cases, the `pack.readReverseIndex` escape hatch can be
used).
[1]: https://github.blog/2021-04-29-scaling-monorepo-maintenance/#reverse-indexes
Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Acked-by: Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
a8dd7e05b1