Re: [PATCH 0/2] A new merge algorithm, take 3

On Thu, 8 Sep 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:

However, note that _most_ tree reading just reads one.

Merges may take half a second, and yes, when I did it, the fact that we move things around in the array is by far the highest cost. But the thing is, if merges take half a second, that's still not only damn good, it's not even the most common operation.

Yes, the active_cache[] layout as one big array is inconvenient for read_tree(), which tends to want to interleave different trees in the array and thus forces things to be moved around.

But remember what the most common use for the index is - it's the "single tree" case from read_cache(). That's _so_ much more common than read_tree() that it's not even funny.

So the data structure is optimized for a different case than reading in trees. Big deal. That optimization is definitely worth it: it allows us to do the read_cache() with the actual index entries being totally read-only (a linked list would have to add a "next" pointer to the cache entries and not allow the in-place thing that read_cache() does).

		Linus