diff mbox series

[v3,03/16] builtin/update-ref: skip ambiguity checks when parsing object IDs

Message ID 20250225-pks-update-ref-optimization-v3-3-77c3687cda75@pks.im (mailing list archive)
State New
Headers show
Series refs: batch refname availability checks | expand

Commit Message

Patrick Steinhardt Feb. 25, 2025, 8:55 a.m. UTC
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 references, 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 out of two 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.

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 25fba78d36b (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 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>
---
 builtin/update-ref.c | 15 ++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

Comments

Junio C Hamano Feb. 26, 2025, 10:26 p.m. UTC | #1
Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

> 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 references, despite the fact that its manpage does
> not mention this fact even once.

Are you referring to <new-oid> and other placeholders with "oid" in
their names?  I do think "oid" in our documentation implies that
only full hexadecimal object names are allowed.  The glossary agrees
by saying that <object id> is a synonym for <object name> that is
usually 40-hex SHA-1.  However, that is not strictly enforced and we
say <object> (or its typed variants like <commit-ish>) even when a
command takes any extended SHA-1 expression, as described in
Documentation/revisions.{txt,adoc}, not limited to full hexadecimal
object name.

So, I am somewhat sympathetic to your confusion, but not that much.
When we wrote the command and documented it back in 2005, we did
mean to take any object name that is spelled in any way, not just
full hexadecimal.  You may want to update the manual to emphasize
that we encourage the use of full hexadecimal for this command and
elsewhere where it is more appropriate.

> 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).
>
>   - 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.

In addition, if the user meant to refer to a ref, it is possible to
disambiguate by prefixing refs/tags/ or whatever.  So squelching the
warning unconditionally might make sense.  We will yield the value
of the full hexadecimal object name, instead of the value of the ref
that is confusingly named, so there is no material change in the
behaviour here.

OK.
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/builtin/update-ref.c b/builtin/update-ref.c
index 4d35bdc4b4b..1d541e13ade 100644
--- a/builtin/update-ref.c
+++ b/builtin/update-ref.c
@@ -179,7 +179,8 @@  static int parse_next_oid(const char **next, const char *end,
 		(*next)++;
 		*next = parse_arg(*next, &arg);
 		if (arg.len) {
-			if (repo_get_oid(the_repository, arg.buf, oid))
+			if (repo_get_oid_with_flags(the_repository, arg.buf, oid,
+						    GET_OID_SKIP_AMBIGUITY_CHECK))
 				goto invalid;
 		} else {
 			/* Without -z, an empty value means all zeros: */
@@ -197,7 +198,8 @@  static int parse_next_oid(const char **next, const char *end,
 		*next += arg.len;
 
 		if (arg.len) {
-			if (repo_get_oid(the_repository, arg.buf, oid))
+			if (repo_get_oid_with_flags(the_repository, arg.buf, oid,
+						    GET_OID_SKIP_AMBIGUITY_CHECK))
 				goto invalid;
 		} else if (flags & PARSE_SHA1_ALLOW_EMPTY) {
 			/* With -z, treat an empty value as all zeros: */
@@ -299,7 +301,8 @@  static void parse_cmd_symref_update(struct ref_transaction *transaction,
 			die("symref-update %s: expected old value", refname);
 
 		if (!strcmp(old_arg, "oid")) {
-			if (repo_get_oid(the_repository, old_target, &old_oid))
+			if (repo_get_oid_with_flags(the_repository, old_target, &old_oid,
+						    GET_OID_SKIP_AMBIGUITY_CHECK))
 				die("symref-update %s: invalid oid: %s", refname, old_target);
 
 			have_old_oid = 1;
@@ -772,7 +775,8 @@  int cmd_update_ref(int argc,
 		refname = argv[0];
 		value = argv[1];
 		oldval = argv[2];
-		if (repo_get_oid(the_repository, value, &oid))
+		if (repo_get_oid_with_flags(the_repository, value, &oid,
+					    GET_OID_SKIP_AMBIGUITY_CHECK))
 			die("%s: not a valid SHA1", value);
 	}
 
@@ -783,7 +787,8 @@  int cmd_update_ref(int argc,
 			 * must not already exist:
 			 */
 			oidclr(&oldoid, the_repository->hash_algo);
-		else if (repo_get_oid(the_repository, oldval, &oldoid))
+		else if (repo_get_oid_with_flags(the_repository, oldval, &oldoid,
+						 GET_OID_SKIP_AMBIGUITY_CHECK))
 			die("%s: not a valid old SHA1", oldval);
 	}