push: don't reuse deltas with path walk

The --path-walk option in `git pack-objects` is implied by the
pack.usePathWalk=true config value. This is intended to help the
packfile generation within `git push` specifically.

While this config does enable the path-walk feature, it does not lead to
the expected levels of compression in the cases it was designed to
handle. This is due to the default implication of the --reuse-delta
option as well as auto-GC.

In the performance tests used to evaluate the --path-walk option, such
as those in p5313, the --no-reuse-delta option is used to ensure that
deltas are recomputed according to the new object walk. However, it was
assumed (I assumed this) that when the objects were loose from
client-side operations that better deltas would be computed during this
operation. This wasn't confirmed because the test process used data that
was fetched from real repositories and thus existed in packed form only.

I was able to confirm that this does not reproduce when the objects to
push are loose. Careful use of making the pushed commit unreachable and
loosening the objects via `git repack -Ad` helps to confirm my
suspicions here. Independent of this change, I'm pushing for these
pipeline agents to set `gc.auto=0` before creating their Git objects. In
the current setup, the repo is adding objects and then incrementally
repacking them and ending up with bad cross-path deltas. This approach
can help scenarios where that makes sense, but will not cover all of our
users without them choosing to opt-in to background maintenance (and
even then, an incremental repack could cost them efficiency).

In order to make sure we are getting the intended compression in `git
push`, this change enforces the spawned `git pack-objects` process to
use `--no-reuse-delta`.

As far as I can tell, the main motivation for implying the --reuse-delta
option by default is two-fold:

 1. The code in send-pack.c that executes 'git pack-objects' is ignorant
    of whether the current process is a client pushing to a remote or a
    remote sending a fetch or clone to a client.

 2. For servers, it is critical that they trust the previously computed
    deltas whenever possible, or they could overload their CPU
    resources.

There's also the side that most servers use repacking logic that will
replace any bad deltas that are sent by clients (or at least, that's the
hope; we've seen that repacks can also pick bad deltas).

This commit also adds a test case that demonstrates that `git -c
pack.usePathWalk=true push` now avoids reusing deltas.

To do this, the test case constructs a pack with a horrendously
inefficient delta object, then verifies that the pack on the receiving
side of the `push` fails to have such an inefficient delta.

The test case would probably be a lot more readable if hex numbers were
used instead of octal numbers, but alas, `printf "\x<hex>"` is not
portable, only `printf "\<octal>"` is. For example, dash's built-in
`printf` function simply prints `\x` verbatim while bash's built-in
happily converts this construct to the corresponding byte.

Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <[email protected]>

builtin/push.c

@@ -619,6 +619,10 @@ int cmd_push(int argc,
 	else if (recurse_submodules == RECURSE_SUBMODULES_ONLY)
 		flags |= TRANSPORT_RECURSE_SUBMODULES_ONLY;
 
+	prepare_repo_settings(the_repository);
+	if (the_repository->settings.pack_use_path_walk)
+		flags |= TRANSPORT_PUSH_NO_REUSE_DELTA;
+
 	if (tags)
 		refspec_append(&rs, "refs/tags/*");
 

send-pack.c

@@ -92,6 +92,8 @@ static int pack_objects(int fd, struct ref *refs, struct oid_array *advertised,
 		strvec_push(&po.args, "--shallow");
 	if (args->disable_bitmaps)
 		strvec_push(&po.args, "--no-use-bitmap-index");
+	if (args->no_reuse_delta)
+		strvec_push(&po.args, "--no-reuse-delta");
 	po.in = -1;
 	po.out = args->stateless_rpc ? -1 : fd;
 	po.git_cmd = 1;

send-pack.h

@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ struct send_pack_args {
 		force_update:1,
 		use_thin_pack:1,
 		use_ofs_delta:1,
+		no_reuse_delta:1,
 		dry_run:1,
 		/* One of the SEND_PACK_PUSH_CERT_* constants. */
 		push_cert:2,

t/meson.build

@@ -710,6 +710,7 @@ integration_tests = [
   't5582-fetch-negative-refspec.sh',
   't5583-push-branches.sh',
   't5584-vfs.sh',
+  't5590-push-path-walk.sh',
   't5600-clone-fail-cleanup.sh',
   't5601-clone.sh',
   't5602-clone-remote-exec.sh',

t/t5590-push-path-walk.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,109 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+test_description='verify that push respects `pack.usePathWalk`'
+
+TEST_PASSES_SANITIZE_LEAK=true
+. ./test-lib.sh
+. "$TEST_DIRECTORY"/lib-pack.sh
+
+test_expect_success 'setup bare repository and clone' '
+	git init --bare -b main bare.git &&
+	git --git-dir=bare.git config receive.unpackLimit 0 &&
+	git --git-dir bare.git commit-tree -m initial $EMPTY_TREE >head_oid &&
+	git --git-dir bare.git update-ref refs/heads/main $(cat head_oid) &&
+	git clone --bare bare.git clone.git
+'
+test_expect_success 'avoid reusing deltified objects' '
+	# construct two commits, one containing a file with the hex digits
+	# repeated 16 times, the next reducing that to 8 times. The crucial
+	# part is that the blob of the second commit is deltified _really_
+	# badly and it is therefore easy to detect if a `git push` reused that
+	# delta.
+	x="0123456789abcdef" &&
+	printf "$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x" >x128 &&
+	printf "$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x$x" >x256 &&
+
+	pack=clone.git/objects/pack/pack-tmp.pack &&
+	pack_header 2 >$pack &&
+
+	# add x256 as a non-deltified object, using an uncompressed zlib stream
+	# for simplicity
+	# 060 = OBJ_BLOB << 4, 0200 = size larger than 15,
+	# 0 = lower 4 bits of size, 020 = bits 5-9 of size (size = 256)
+	printf "\260\020" >>$pack &&
+	# Uncompressed zlib stream always starts with 0170 1 1, followed
+	# by two bytes encoding the size, little endian, then two bytes with
+	# the bitwise-complement of that size, then the payload, and then the
+	# Adler32 checksum. For some reason, the checksum is in big-endian
+	# format.
+	printf "\170\001\001\0\001\377\376" >>$pack &&
+	cat x256 >>$pack &&
+	# Manually-computed Adler32 checksum: 0xd7ae4621
+	printf "\327\256\106\041" >>$pack &&
+
+	# add x128 as a very badly deltified object
+	# 0120 = OBJ_OFS_DELTA << 4, 0200 = total size larger than 15,
+	# 4 = lower 4 bits of size, 030 = bits 5-9 of size
+	# (size = 128 * 3 + 2 + 2)
+	printf "\344\030" >>$pack &&
+	# 0415 = size (i.e. the relative negative offset) of the previous
+	# object (x256, used as base object)
+	# encoded as 0200 | ((0415 >> 7) - 1), 0415 & 0177
+	printf "\201\015" >>$pack &&
+	# Uncompressed zlib stream, as before, size = 2 + 2 + 128 * 3 (i.e.
+	# 0604)
+	printf "\170\001\001\204\001\173\376" >>$pack &&
+	# base object size = 0400 (encoded as 0200 | (0400 & 0177),
+	# 0400 >> 7)
+	printf "\200\002" >>$pack &&
+	# object size = 0200 (encoded as 0200 | (0200 & 0177), 0200 >> 7
+	printf "\200\001" >>$pack &&
+	# massively badly-deltified object: copy every single byte individually
+	# 0200 = copy, 1 = use 1 byte to encode the offset (counter),
+	# 020 = use 1 byte to encode the size (1)
+	printf "$(printf "\\\\221\\\\%03o\\\\001" $(test_seq 0 127))" >>$pack &&
+	# Manually-computed Adler32 checksum: 0x99c369c4
+	printf "\231\303\151\304" >>$pack &&
+
+	pack_trailer $pack &&
+	git index-pack -v $pack &&
+
+	oid256=$(git hash-object x256) &&
+	printf "100755 blob $oid256\thex\n" >tree &&
+	tree_oid="$(git --git-dir=clone.git mktree <tree)" &&
+	commit_oid=$(git --git-dir=clone.git commit-tree \
+		-p $(git --git-dir=clone.git rev-parse main) \
+		-m 256 $tree_oid) &&
+
+	oid128=$(git hash-object x128) &&
+	printf "100755 blob $oid128\thex\n" >tree &&
+	tree_oid="$(git --git-dir=clone.git mktree <tree)" &&
+	commit_oid=$(git --git-dir=clone.git commit-tree \
+		-p $commit_oid \
+		-m 128 $tree_oid) &&
+
+	# Verify that the on-disk size of the delta object is suboptimal in the
+	# clone (see below why 18 bytes or smaller is the optimal size):
+	git index-pack --verify-stat clone.git/objects/pack/pack-*.pack >verify &&
+	size="$(sed -n "s/^$oid128 blob *\([^ ]*\).*/\1/p" <verify)" &&
+	test $size -gt 18 &&
+
+	git --git-dir=clone.git update-ref refs/heads/main $commit_oid &&
+	git --git-dir=clone.git -c pack.usePathWalk=true push origin main &&
+	git index-pack --verify-stat bare.git/objects/pack/pack-*.pack >verify &&
+	size="$(sed -n "s/^$oid128 blob *\([^ ]*\).*/\1/p" <verify)" &&
+	# The on-disk size of the delta object should be smaller than, or equal
+	# to, 18 bytes, as that would be the size if storing the payload
+	# uncompressed:
+	#   3 bytes: 0170 01 01
+	# + 2 bytes: zlib stream size
+	# + 2 bytes: but-wise complement of the zlib stream size
+	# + 7 bytes: payload
+	#   (= 2 bytes for the size of tbe base object
+	#    + 2 bytes for the size of the delta command
+	#    + 3 bytes for the copy command)
+	# + 2 + 2 bytes: Adler32 checksum
+	test $size -le 18
+'
+
+test_done

transport.c

@@ -916,6 +916,7 @@ static int git_transport_push(struct transport *transport, struct ref *remote_re
 	args.dry_run = !!(flags & TRANSPORT_PUSH_DRY_RUN);
 	args.porcelain = !!(flags & TRANSPORT_PUSH_PORCELAIN);
 	args.atomic = !!(flags & TRANSPORT_PUSH_ATOMIC);
+	args.no_reuse_delta = !!(flags & TRANSPORT_PUSH_NO_REUSE_DELTA);
 	args.push_options = transport->push_options;
 	args.url = transport->url;
 

transport.h

@@ -158,6 +158,7 @@ struct transport {
 #define TRANSPORT_RECURSE_SUBMODULES_ONLY	(1<<15)
 #define TRANSPORT_PUSH_FORCE_IF_INCLUDES	(1<<16)
 #define TRANSPORT_PUSH_AUTO_UPSTREAM		(1<<17)
+#define TRANSPORT_PUSH_NO_REUSE_DELTA		(1<<18)
 
 int transport_summary_width(const struct ref *refs);