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Re: [PATCH v3 02/11] Add initial support for many promisor remotes

From
Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com>
Date
Apr 1, 2019, 16:41 UTC
Message-ID
<CAP8UFD208vY=0tduwSipBHYTPJCrBtsME6GouZMiKrnXJ=0zAw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<xmqqtvg7e7pn.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 5:09 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
Show 8 quoted lines
>
> Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > +struct promisor_remote *promisor_remote_new(const char *remote_name)
> > +{
>
> Shouldn't this be static?  The config callback that calls this
> function is inside this file.
Yeah, I made it static.
Show 12 quoted lines
> > +     struct promisor_remote *o;
> > +
> > +     o = xcalloc(1, sizeof(*o));
> > +     o->remote_name = xstrdup(remote_name);
>
> A comment on this later...
>
> > +static struct promisor_remote *promisor_remote_look_up(const char *remote_name,
> > +                                                    struct promisor_remote **previous)
>
> In our codebase, this operation is far more often called "lookup",
> one word, according to "git grep -e look_up \*.h".
Ok, I changed it to "lookup".
Show 11 quoted lines
> > +{
> > +     struct promisor_remote *o, *p;
> > +
> > +     for (p = NULL, o = promisors; o; p = o, o = o->next)
> > +             if (o->remote_name && !strcmp(o->remote_name, remote_name)) {
> > +                     if (previous)
> > +                             *previous = p;
>
> I think the "previous" thing is for the callers to learn what
> pointer points at the found entry, allowing e.g. an element to be
> inserted just before the found element.
Actually it's to make it easy to move the found element.
Show 6 quoted lines
> If so, would it make more
> sense to use the more familiar pattern to use
>
>         *previous = &promisors;
>
> here?

If I do that I get an "error: assignment from incompatible pointer type" as "*previous" is of type "struct promisor_remote *" while "&promisors" is of type "struct promisor_remote **".

Maybe you mean:
         *previous = promisors;

but I fail to see how that would correctly pass the previous element when the found one is not the first one.

> That would remove the need to switch on NULL-ness of previous
> in the caller.

In the only caller that passes a non NULL previous, we call promisor_remote_move_to_tail() which does:

    if (previous)
        previous->next = o->next;
    else
        promisors = o->next ? o->next : o;

So yeah we check the NULL-ness of previous, but if previous has been set to promisors, then previous->next = o->next will not set promisors correctly.

I guess we are not here in the case were the familiar pattern you are thinking about can be applied. Or is there an example, maybe in the Git source code, that I could learn from?

Another possibility is to just use hashmap as you suggest below or list.h. It might be a bit wasteful, but the code simplification might be worth it.

Show 29 quoted lines
> > diff --git a/promisor-remote.h b/promisor-remote.h
> > new file mode 100644
> > index 0000000000..bfbf7c0f21
> > --- /dev/null
> > +++ b/promisor-remote.h
> > @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
> > +#ifndef PROMISOR_REMOTE_H
> > +#define PROMISOR_REMOTE_H
> > +
> > +/*
> > + * Promisor remote linked list
> > + * Its information come from remote.XXX config entries.
> > + */
> > +struct promisor_remote {
> > +     const char *remote_name;
> > +     struct promisor_remote *next;
> > +};
>
> Would it make the management of storage easier to make it
>
>         struct promisor_remote {
>                 struct promisor_remote *next;
>                 const char name[FLEX_ARRAY];
>         };
>
> that will allow allocation with
>
>         struct promisor_remote *r;
>         FLEX_ALLOC_STR(r, name, remote_name);

Ok to use a flex array. If we ever use arrays or hashmaps of promisor remotes, we might have to go back to not using one.

> Or if the remote_name field must be a pointer, perhaps use
> FLEXPTR_ALLOC_STR().
[...]
> Can the name of promisor be any string?  If they end up getting used
> as part of a path on the filesystem, we'd need to worry about case
> sensitivity and UTF-8 normalization issues as well.

It looks like for regular remotes we only check if they start with /. So I don't think we need to do more than that for promisor remotes. I added the check.

Show 5 quoted lines
> In a large enough project where multi-promisor makes sense, what is
> the expected number of promisors a repository would define?  10s?
> 1000s?  Would a linked list still make sense when deployed in the
> real world, or would we be forced to move to something like hashmap
> later?
I am ok to use hashmap to make it similar with regular remotes.

For now I don't expect large projects to use more than 10s promisors though. They are defined in the config file and I don't think people will be happy if they have to manage more than 10s promisors in their config file. If people really start to use more than that, they are likely to ask us for a new mechanism to manage them (and to automatically have them configured from servers). So maybe we can change that if/when we have to work on such mechanism.

Show 10 quoted lines
> You do not have to have the answers to all these questions, and even
> the ones with concrete answers, you do not necessarily have to act
> on them right now (e.g. you may anticipate the eventual need to move
> to hashmap, but prototyping with linked list is perfectly fine;
> being aware of the possibility alone would force us to be careful to
> make sure that the implementation detail does not leak through too
> much and confined within _lookup(), _find(), etc. functions, and
> that awareness is good enough at this point).
>
> Thanks.
Previous: Junio C HamanoNext: Christian Couder
Message 9 of 22 in “Many promisor remotes”
  1. 00/11 Many promisor remotesChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  2. 01/11 fetch-object: make functions return an error codeChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  3. 03/11 promisor-remote: implement promisor_remote_get_direct()Christian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  4. Junio C HamanoMar 13, 2019
  5. Christian CouderApr 1, 2019
  6. 02/11 Add initial support for many promisor remotesChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  7. Junio C HamanoMar 13, 2019
  8. Junio C HamanoMar 13, 2019
  9. Christian CouderApr 1, 2019
  10. 04/11 promisor-remote: add promisor_remote_reinit()Christian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  11. Junio C HamanoMar 13, 2019
  12. Christian CouderApr 1, 2019
  13. 05/11 promisor-remote: use repository_format_partial_cloneChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  14. Junio C HamanoMar 13, 2019
  15. Christian CouderApr 1, 2019
  16. Junio C HamanoApr 1, 2019
  17. 07/11 promisor-remote: parse remote.*.partialclonefilterChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  18. 08/11 builtin/fetch: remove unique promisor remote limitationChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  19. 06/11 Use promisor_remote_get_direct() and has_promisor_remote()Christian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  20. 09/11 t0410: test fetching from many promisor remotesChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  21. 10/11 partial-clone: add multiple remotes in the docChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019
  22. 11/11 remote: add promisor and partial clone config to the docChristian Couder, Mar 12, 2019

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