list-objects: consume sparse tree walk

When creating a pack-file using 'git pack-objects --revs' we provide
a list of interesting and uninteresting commits. For example, a push
operation would make the local topic branch be interesting and the
known remote refs as uninteresting. We want to discover the set of
new objects to send to the server as a thin pack.

We walk these commits until we discover a frontier of commits such
that every commit walk starting at interesting commits ends in a root
commit or unintersting commit. We then need to discover which
non-commit objects are reachable from  uninteresting commits. This
commit walk is not changing during this series.

The mark_edges_uninteresting() method in list-objects.c iterates on
the commit list and does the following:

* If the commit is UNINTERSTING, then mark its root tree and every
  object it can reach as UNINTERESTING.

* If the commit is interesting, then mark the root tree of every
  UNINTERSTING parent (and all objects that tree can reach) as
  UNINTERSTING.

At the very end, we repeat the process on every commit directly
given to the revision walk from stdin. This helps ensure we properly
cover shallow commits that otherwise were not included in the
frontier.

The logic to recursively follow trees is in the
mark_tree_uninteresting() method in revision.c. The algorithm avoids
duplicate work by not recursing into trees that are already marked
UNINTERSTING.

Add a new 'sparse' option to the mark_edges_uninteresting() method
that performs this logic in a slightly different way. As we iterate
over the commits, we add all of the root trees to an oidset. Then,
call mark_trees_uninteresting_sparse() on that oidset. Note that we
include interesting trees in this process. The current implementation
of mark_trees_unintersting_sparse() will walk the same trees as
the old logic, but this will be replaced in a later change.

Add a '--sparse' flag in 'git pack-objects' to call this new logic.
Add a new test script t/t5322-pack-objects-sparse.sh that tests this
option. The tests currently demonstrate that the resulting object
list is the same as the old algorithm. This includes a case where
both algorithms pack an object that is not needed by a remote due to
limits on the explored set of trees. When the sparse algorithm is
changed in a later commit, we will add a test that demonstrates a
change of behavior in some cases.

Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git-pack-objects.txt b/Documentation/git-pack-objects.txt
index 40c825c381..e45f3e680d 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-pack-objects.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-pack-objects.txt
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ SYNOPSIS
 	[--local] [--incremental] [--window=<n>] [--depth=<n>]
 	[--revs [--unpacked | --all]] [--keep-pack=<pack-name>]
 	[--stdout [--filter=<filter-spec>] | base-name]
-	[--shallow] [--keep-true-parents] < object-list
+	[--shallow] [--keep-true-parents] [--sparse] < object-list
 
 
 DESCRIPTION
@@ -196,6 +196,15 @@ depth is 4095.
 	Add --no-reuse-object if you want to force a uniform compression
 	level on all data no matter the source.
 
+--sparse::
+	Use the "sparse" algorithm to determine which objects to include in
+	the pack, when combined with the "--revs" option. This algorithm
+	only walks trees that appear in paths that introduce new objects.
+	This can have significant performance benefits when computing
+	a pack to send a small change. However, it is possible that extra
+	objects are added to the pack-file if the included commits contain
+	certain types of direct renames.
+
 --thin::
 	Create a "thin" pack by omitting the common objects between a
 	sender and a receiver in order to reduce network transfer. This