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

[PATCH 6/6] upload-pack: provide a hook for running pack-objects

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
May 18, 2016, 22:45 UTC
Message-ID
<20160518224537.GF22443@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<20160518223712.GA18317@sigill.intra.peff.net>

When upload-pack serves a client request, it turns to pack-objects to do the heavy lifting of creating a packfile. There's no easy way to intercept the call to pack-objects, but there are a few good reasons to want to do so:

  1. If you're debugging a client or server issue with
     fetching, you may want to store a copy of the generated
     packfile.
  2. If you're gathering data from real-world fetches for
     performance analysis or debugging, storing a copy of
     the arguments and stdin lets you replay the pack
     generation at your leisure.
  3. You may want to insert a caching layer around
     pack-objects; it is the most CPU- and memory-intensive
     part of serving a fetch, and its output is a pure
     function[1] of its input, making it an ideal place to
     consolidate identical requests.

This patch adds a simple "hook" interface to intercept calls to pack-objects. The new test demonstrates how it can be used for debugging (using it for caching is a straightforward extension; the tricky part is writing the actual caching layer).

This hook is unlike the normal hook scripts found in the "hooks/" directory of a repository. Because we promise that upload-pack is safe to run in an untrusted repository, we cannot execute arbitrary code or commands found in the repository (neither in hooks/, nor in the config). So instead, this hook is triggered from a config variable that is explicitly ignored in the per-repo config.

The config variable holds the actual shell command to run as the hook. Another approach would be to simply treat it as a boolean: "should I respect the upload-pack hooks in this repo?", and then run the script from "hooks/" as we usually do. However, that isn't as flexible; there's no way to run a hook approved by the site administrator (e.g., in "/etc/gitconfig") on a repository whose contents are not trusted. The approach taken by this patch is more fine-grained, if a little less conventional for git hooks (it does behave similar to other configured commands like diff.external, etc).

[1] Pack-objects isn't _actually_ a pure function. Its
    output depends on the exact packing of the object
    database, and if multi-threading is used for delta
    compression, can even differ racily. But for the
    purposes of caching, that's OK; of the many possible
    outputs for a given input, it is sufficient only that we
    output one of them.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 Documentation/config.txt     | 15 +++++++++++
 t/t5544-pack-objects-hook.sh | 62 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 upload-pack.c                | 13 +++++++++-
 3 files changed, 89 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 create mode 100755 t/t5544-pack-objects-hook.sh
diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index e4cd291..b9b0541 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -2872,6 +2872,21 @@ uploadpack.keepAlive::
 	`uploadpack.keepAlive` seconds. Setting this option to 0
 	disables keepalive packets entirely. The default is 5 seconds.
 
+uploadpack.packObjectsHook::
+	If this option is set, when `upload-pack` would run
+	`git pack-objects` to create a packfile for a client, it will
+	run this shell command instead.  The `pack-objects` command and
+	arguments it _would_ have run (including the `git pack-objects`
+	at the beginning) are appended to the shell command. The stdin
+	and stdout of the hook are treated as if `pack-objects` itself
+	was run. I.e., `upload-pack` will feed input intended for
+	`pack-objects` to the hook, and expects a completed packfile on
+	stdout.
++
+Note that this configuration variable is ignored if it is seen in the
+repository-level config (this is a safety measure against fetching from
+untrusted repositories).
+
 url.<base>.insteadOf::
 	Any URL that starts with this value will be rewritten to
 	start, instead, with <base>. In cases where some site serves a
diff --git a/t/t5544-pack-objects-hook.sh b/t/t5544-pack-objects-hook.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..4357af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/t/t5544-pack-objects-hook.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+test_description='test custom script in place of pack-objects'
+. ./test-lib.sh
+
+test_expect_success 'create some history to fetch' '
+	test_commit one &&
+	test_commit two
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'create debugging hook script' '
+	write_script .git/hook <<-\EOF
+		echo >&2 "hook running"
+		echo "$*" >hook.args
+		cat >hook.stdin
+		"$@" <hook.stdin >hook.stdout
+		cat hook.stdout
+	EOF
+'
+
+clear_hook_results () {
+	rm -rf .git/hook.* dst.git
+}
+
+test_expect_success 'hook runs via global config' '
+	clear_hook_results &&
+	test_config_global uploadpack.packObjectsHook ./hook &&
+	git clone --no-local . dst.git 2>stderr &&
+	grep "hook running" stderr
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'hook outputs are sane' '
+	# check that we recorded a usable pack
+	git index-pack --stdin <.git/hook.stdout &&
+
+	# check that we recorded args and stdin. We do not check
+	# the full argument list or the exact pack contents, as it would make
+	# the test brittle. So just sanity check that we could replay
+	# the packing procedure.
+	grep "^git" .git/hook.args &&
+	$(cat .git/hook.args) <.git/hook.stdin >replay
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'hook runs from -c config' '
+	clear_hook_results &&
+	git clone --no-local \
+	  -u "git -c uploadpack.packObjectsHook=./hook upload-pack" \
+	  . dst.git 2>stderr &&
+	grep "hook running" stderr
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'hook does not run from repo config' '
+	clear_hook_results &&
+	test_config uploadpack.packObjectsHook "./hook" &&
+	git clone --no-local . dst.git 2>stderr &&
+	! grep "hook running" stderr &&
+	test_path_is_missing .git/hook.args &&
+	test_path_is_missing .git/hook.stdin &&
+	test_path_is_missing .git/hook.stdout
+'
+
+test_done
diff --git a/upload-pack.c b/upload-pack.c
index f19444d..8979be6 100644
--- a/upload-pack.c
+++ b/upload-pack.c
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ static int keepalive = 5;
 static int use_sideband;
 static int advertise_refs;
 static int stateless_rpc;
+static const char *pack_objects_hook;
 
 static void reset_timeout(void)
 {
@@ -93,6 +94,14 @@ static void create_pack_file(void)
 	int i;
 	FILE *pipe_fd;
 
+	if (!pack_objects_hook)
+		pack_objects.git_cmd = 1;
+	else {
+		argv_array_push(&pack_objects.args, pack_objects_hook);
+		argv_array_push(&pack_objects.args, "git");
+		pack_objects.use_shell = 1;
+	}
+
 	if (shallow_nr) {
 		argv_array_push(&pack_objects.args, "--shallow-file");
 		argv_array_push(&pack_objects.args, "");
@@ -115,7 +124,6 @@ static void create_pack_file(void)
 	pack_objects.in = -1;
 	pack_objects.out = -1;
 	pack_objects.err = -1;
-	pack_objects.git_cmd = 1;
 
 	if (start_command(&pack_objects))
 		die("git upload-pack: unable to fork git-pack-objects");
@@ -812,6 +820,9 @@ static int upload_pack_config(const char *var, const char *value, void *unused)
 		keepalive = git_config_int(var, value);
 		if (!keepalive)
 			keepalive = -1;
+	} else if (current_config_scope() != CONFIG_SCOPE_REPO) {
+		if (!strcmp("uploadpack.packobjectshook", var))
+			return git_config_string(&pack_objects_hook, var, value);
 	}
 	return parse_hide_refs_config(var, value, "uploadpack");
 }
-- 
2.8.2.888.gecb1fe3
Previous: Jeff KingNext: Jeff King
Message 15 of 23 in “pack-objects hook for upload-pack”
  1. 0/6 pack-objects hook for upload-packJeff King, May 18, 2016
  2. 1/6 git_config_with_options: drop "found" countingJeff King, May 18, 2016
  3. 2/6 git_config_parse_parameter: refactor cleanup codeJeff King, May 18, 2016
  4. 3/6 config: set up config_source for command-line configJeff King, May 18, 2016
  5. 4/6 config: return configset value for current_config_ functionsJeff King, May 18, 2016
  6. Jeff KingMay 19, 2016
  7. Duy NguyenMay 26, 2016
  8. Junio C HamanoMay 26, 2016
  9. Jeff KingMay 26, 2016
  10. Junio C HamanoMay 26, 2016
  11. Jeff KingMay 27, 2016
  12. Junio C HamanoMay 27, 2016
  13. Jeff KingMay 27, 2016
  14. 5/6 config: add a notion of "scope"Jeff King, May 18, 2016
  15. 6/6 upload-pack: provide a hook for running pack-objectsJeff King, May 18, 2016
  16. Jeff KingMay 19, 2016
  17. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMay 19, 2016
  18. Jeff KingMay 19, 2016
  19. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMay 19, 2016
  20. Jeff KingMay 26, 2016
  21. Junio C HamanoMay 25, 2016
  22. Jeff KingMay 26, 2016
  23. Junio C HamanoMay 26, 2016

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.