[PATCH 6/7] config: enable `pack.writeReverseIndex` by default

Back in e37d0b8730 (builtin/index-pack.c: write reverse indexes, 2021-01-25), Git learned how to read and write a pack's reverse index from a file instead of in-memory.

A pack's reverse index is a mapping from pack position (that is, the order that objects appear together in a ".pack") to their position in lexical order (that is, the order that objects are listed in an ".idx" file).

Reverse indexes are consulted often during pack-objects, as well as during auxiliary operations that require mapping between pack offsets, pack order, and index index.

They are useful in GitHub's infrastructure, where we have seen a dramatic increase in performance when writing ".rev" files[1]. In particular:

  - an ~80% reduction in the time it takes to serve fetches on a popular
    repository, Homebrew/homebrew-core.

  - a ~60% reduction in the peak memory usage to serve fetches on that
    same repository.

  - a collective savings of ~35% in CPU time across all pack-objects
    invocations serving fetches across all repositories in a single
    datacenter.

Reverse indexes are also beneficial to end-users as well as forges. For example, the time it takes to generate a pack containing the objects for the 10 most recent commits in linux.git (representing a typical push) is significantly faster when on-disk reverse indexes are available:

    $ { git rev-parse HEAD && printf '^' && git rev-parse HEAD~10 } >in
    $ hyperfine -L v false,true 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex={v} pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'
    Benchmark 1: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
      Time (mean ± σ):     543.0 ms ±  20.3 ms    [User: 616.2 ms, System: 58.8 ms]
      Range (min … max):   521.0 ms … 577.9 ms    10 runs

    Benchmark 2: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
      Time (mean ± σ):     245.0 ms ±  11.4 ms    [User: 335.6 ms, System: 31.3 ms]
      Range (min … max):   226.0 ms … 259.6 ms    13 runs

    Summary
      'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null' ran
	2.22 ± 0.13 times faster than 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'

The same is true of writing a pack containing the objects for the 30 most-recent commits:

    $ { git rev-parse HEAD && printf '^' && git rev-parse HEAD~30 } >in
    $ hyperfine -L v false,true 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex={v} pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'
    Benchmark 1: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
      Time (mean ± σ):     866.5 ms ±  16.2 ms    [User: 1414.5 ms, System: 97.0 ms]
      Range (min … max):   839.3 ms … 886.9 ms    10 runs

    Benchmark 2: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null
      Time (mean ± σ):     581.6 ms ±  10.2 ms    [User: 1181.7 ms, System: 62.6 ms]
      Range (min … max):   567.5 ms … 599.3 ms    10 runs

    Summary
      'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null' ran
	1.49 ± 0.04 times faster than 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false pack-objects --delta-base-offset --revs --stdout <in >/dev/null'

...and savings on trivial operations like computing the on-disk size of a single (packed) object are even more dramatic:

    $ git rev-parse HEAD >in
    $ hyperfine -L v false,true 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex={v} cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in'
    Benchmark 1: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in
      Time (mean ± σ):     305.8 ms ±  11.4 ms    [User: 264.2 ms, System: 41.4 ms]
      Range (min … max):   290.3 ms … 331.1 ms    10 runs

    Benchmark 2: git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in
      Time (mean ± σ):       4.0 ms ±   0.3 ms    [User: 1.7 ms, System: 2.3 ms]
      Range (min … max):     1.6 ms …   4.6 ms    1155 runs

    Summary
      'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=true cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in' ran
       76.96 ± 6.25 times faster than 'git.compile -c pack.readReverseIndex=false cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:disk)" <in'

In the more than two years since e37d0b8730 was merged, Git's implementation of on-disk reverse indexes has been thoroughly tested, both from users enabling `pack.writeReverseIndexes`, and from GitHub's deployment of the feature. The latter has been running without incident for more than two years.

This patch changes Git's behavior to write on-disk reverse indexes by default when indexing a pack, which should make the above operations faster for everybody's Git installation after a repack.

(The previous commit explains some potential drawbacks of using on-disk reverse indexes in certain limited circumstances, that essentially boil down to a trade-off between time to generate, and time to access. For those limited cases, the `pack.readReverseIndex` escape hatch can be used).

[1]: https://github.blog/2021-04-29-scaling-monorepo-maintenance/#reverse-indexes

Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
---
 Documentation/config/pack.txt     | 2 +-
 builtin/index-pack.c              | 1 +
 builtin/pack-objects.c            | 1 +
 t/perf/p5312-pack-bitmaps-revs.sh | 3 +--
 t/t5325-reverse-index.sh          | 1 +
 5 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)