git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: [PATCH] remote.c: avoid O(n^2) behavior in match_push_refs by using string_list

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
Jul 3, 2013, 06:23 UTC
Message-ID
<20130703062332.GA16090@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<1372809228-2963-1-git-send-email-bcasey@nvidia.com>
On Tue, Jul 02, 2013 at 04:53:48PM -0700, Brandon Casey wrote:
Show 11 quoted lines
> From: Brandon Casey <drafnel@gmail.com>
> 
> When pushing, each ref in the local repository must be paired with a
> ref advertised by the remote server.  Currently, this is performed by
> first applying the refspec to the local ref to transform the local ref
> into the name of the remote ref, and then performing a linear search
> through the list of remote refs to see if the remote ref was advertised
> by the remote system.
> 
> This has O(n) complexity and makes match_push_refs() be an O(n^2)
> operation.

Just to be sure I understand correctly, is this actually O(m*n) where "m" is the number of local refs and "n" is the number of remote refs?

For a repository that repeatedly pushes everything it has to the remote, we end up with m=n, but it would not necessarily be the case if you are pushing a subset of your refs. But even pushing a small number of refs into a repository with a very large number of refs would be unnecessarily slow, as we would do several O(n) lookups which could be O(log n). So it may speed things up even in the case of a normal-sized repo pushing to a large one.

Show 6 quoted lines
> Dry-run push of a repository with 121913 refs:
> 
>         before     after
> real    1m40.582s  0m0.804s
> user    1m39.914s  0m0.515s
> sys     0m0.125s   0m0.106s
Very nice. :)
> Signed-off-by: Brandon Casey <drafnel@gmail.com>
> ---
>  remote.c | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++--
>  1 file changed, 24 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Patch itself looks good to me, although...
Show 18 quoted lines
> @@ -1362,6 +1378,8 @@ int match_push_refs(struct ref *src, struct ref **dst,
>  		free(dst_name);
>  	}
>  
> +	string_list_clear(&ref_list, 0);
> +
>  	if (flags & MATCH_REFS_FOLLOW_TAGS)
>  		add_missing_tags(src, dst, &dst_tail);
>  
> @@ -1376,11 +1394,15 @@ int match_push_refs(struct ref *src, struct ref **dst,
>  
>  			src_name = get_ref_match(rs, nr_refspec, ref, send_mirror, FROM_DST, NULL);
>  			if (src_name) {
> -				if (!find_ref_by_name(src, src_name))
> +				if (!ref_list.nr)
> +					prepare_searchable_ref_list(src,
> +						&ref_list);
> +				if (!string_list_has_string(&ref_list, src_name))

This hunk threw me for a bit, as it looked like we were lazily initializing ref_list in case we had not done so earlier. But we would have cleared it mid-way through the function (in the hunk above), and it is only that we are reusing the same ref_list for two different purposes.

I do not feel strongly about it, but it might be a little more obvious to just declare a new variable in the block, like:

diff --git a/remote.c b/remote.c
index 75255af..53bef82 100644
--- a/remote.c
+++ b/remote.c
@@ -1399,6 +1399,7 @@ int match_push_refs(struct ref *src, struct ref **dst,
 		add_missing_tags(src, dst, &dst_tail);
 
 	if (send_prune) {
+		struct string_list src_ref_index = STRING_LIST_INIT_NODUP;
 		/* check for missing refs on the remote */
 		for (ref = *dst; ref; ref = ref->next) {
 			char *src_name;
@@ -1409,15 +1410,15 @@ int match_push_refs(struct ref *src, struct ref **dst,
 
 			src_name = get_ref_match(rs, nr_refspec, ref, send_mirror, FROM_DST, NULL);
 			if (src_name) {
-				if (!ref_list.nr)
+				if (!src_ref_index.nr)
 					prepare_searchable_ref_list(src,
-						&ref_list);
-				if (!string_list_has_string(&ref_list, src_name))
+						&src_ref_index);
+				if (!string_list_has_string(&src_ref_index, src_name))
 					ref->peer_ref = alloc_delete_ref();
 				free(src_name);
 			}
 		}
-		string_list_clear(&ref_list, 0);
+		string_list_clear(&src_ref_index, 0);
 	}
 	if (errs)
 		return -1;

And similarly maybe call the outer ref_list dst_ref_index or something.
I also note that we don't do the lazy-prepare for the other loop. I
guess that is because we assume that "src" is always non-NULL?

-Peff
Previous: Brandon CaseyNext: Brandon Casey
Message 2 of 12 in “remote.c: avoid O(n^2) behavior in match_push_refs by using string_list”
  1. remote.c: avoid O(n^2) behavior in match_push_refs by using string_listBrandon Casey, Jul 2, 2013
  2. Jeff KingJul 3, 2013
  3. Brandon CaseyJul 3, 2013
  4. Junio C HamanoJul 3, 2013
  5. Jeff KingJul 3, 2013
  6. Brandon CaseyJul 3, 2013
  7. Brandon CaseyJul 3, 2013
  8. Junio C HamanoJul 3, 2013
  9. remote.c: avoid O(m*n) behavior in match_push_refsBrandon Casey, Jul 8, 2013
  10. Jeff KingJul 8, 2013
  11. remote.c: avoid O(m*n) behavior in match_push_refsBrandon Casey, Jul 8, 2013
  12. Junio C HamanoJul 8, 2013

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.