Before, a merge was first calculated, by running various actions that
called git and built up a list of lines, which were at the end sent
to git update-index. This necessarily used space proportional to the size
of the diff between the trees being merged.
Now, lines are streamed into git update-index from each of the actions in
turn.
Runtime size of git-annex merge when merging 50000 location log files
drops from around 100 mb to a constant 4 mb.
Presumably it runs quite a lot faster, too.
This reduces the memory use of a merge by 1/3rd. The space leak was
apparently because the whole update-index input was generated strictly, not
lazily.
I wondered if the change to ByteStrings contributed to this, due to the
need to convert with L.pack here. But going back to the old code, I still
see a much similar leak, and worse performance besides due to it not using
ByteStrings.
The fix is to just hPutStr the lines repeatedly. (Note the \0 is written
separately, to avoid allocation overheads in adding it to the string.)
The Git.pipeWrite interface is probably just wrong for any large inputs to
git. This was the only place using it for input of any size.
There is still at least one other space leak in the merge code.
Avoids doing auto-merging in commands that don't need fully current
information from the git-annex branch. In particular, git annex add no
longer needs to auto-merge. Affected commands: Anything that doesn't
look up data from the branch, but does write a change to it.
It might seem counterintuitive that we can change a value without first
making sure we have the current value. This optimisation works because
these two sequences are equivilant:
1. pull from remote
2. union merge
3. read file from branch
4. modify file and write to branch
vs.
1. read file from branch
2. modify file and write to branch
3. pull from remote
4. union merge
After either sequence, the git-annex branch contains the same logical content
for the modified file. (Possibly with lines in a different order or
additional old lines of course).
More accurately, it was supported already when map uses git-annex-shell,
but not when it does not.
Note that the user name cannot be shell escaped using git-annex's current
approach for shell escaping. I tried and some shells like dash cannot
cd ~'joey'. Rest of directory is still shell escaped, not for security but
in case a directory has a space or other weird character.
git-annex-shell inannex now returns always 0, 1, or 100 (the last when
it's unclear if content is currently in the index due to it currently being
moved or dropped).
(Actual locking code still not yet written.)
The lock will only persist during the perform stage, so the content must
be removed from the annex then, rather than in the cleanup stage.
(No lock is actually taken yet.)
