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[PATCH v3 1/2] commit-graph: introduce envvar to disable commit existence checks

From
Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date
Oct 31, 2023, 07:16 UTC
Message-ID
<c433ec125499e586d7a29d71f41a0ba197c28f58.1698736363.git.ps@pks.im>
In-Reply-To
<cover.1698736363.git.ps@pks.im>

Our `lookup_commit_in_graph()` helper tries to look up commits from the commit graph and, if it doesn't exist there, falls back to parsing it from the object database instead. This is intended to speed up the lookup of any such commit that exists in the database. There is an edge case though where the commit exists in the graph, but not in the object database. To avoid returning such stale commits the helper function thus double checks that any such commit parsed from the graph also exists in the object database. This makes the function safe to use even when commit graphs aren't updated regularly.

We're about to introduce the same pattern into other parts of our code base though, namely `repo_parse_commit_internal()`. Here the extra sanity check is a bit of a tougher sell: `lookup_commit_in_graph()` was a newly introduced helper, and as such there was no performance hit by adding this sanity check. If we added `repo_parse_commit_internal()` with that sanity check right from the beginning as well, this would probably never have been an issue to begin with. But by retrofitting it with this sanity check now we do add a performance regression to preexisting code, and thus there is a desire to avoid this or at least give an escape hatch.

In practice, there is no inherent reason why either of those functions should have the sanity check whereas the other one does not: either both of them are able to detect this issue or none of them should be. This also means that the default of whether we do the check should likely be the same for both. To err on the side of caution, we thus rather want to make `repo_parse_commit_internal()` stricter than to loosen the checks that we already have in `lookup_commit_in_graph()`.

The escape hatch is added in the form of a new GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA environment variable that mirrors GIT_REF_PARANOIA. If enabled, which is the default, we will double check that commits looked up in the commit graph via `lookup_commit_in_graph()` also exist in the object database. This same check will also be added in `repo_parse_commit_internal()`.

Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
---
 Documentation/git.txt   | 10 ++++++++++
 commit-graph.c          |  6 +++++-
 commit-graph.h          |  6 ++++++
 t/t5318-commit-graph.sh | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
 4 files changed, 42 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index 11228956cd..3bac24cf8a 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -911,6 +911,16 @@ for full details.
 	should not normally need to set this to `0`, but it may be
 	useful when trying to salvage data from a corrupted repository.
 
+`GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA`::
+	When loading a commit object from the commit-graph, Git performs an
+	existence check on the object in the object database. This is done to
+	avoid issues with stale commit-graphs that contain references to
+	already-deleted commits, but comes with a performance penalty.
++
+The default is "true", which enables the aforementioned behavior.
+Setting this to "false" disables the existence check. This can lead to
+a performance improvement at the cost of consistency.
+
 `GIT_ALLOW_PROTOCOL`::
 	If set to a colon-separated list of protocols, behave as if
 	`protocol.allow` is set to `never`, and each of the listed
diff --git a/commit-graph.c b/commit-graph.c
index fd2f700b2e..6d21ea6301 100644
--- a/commit-graph.c
+++ b/commit-graph.c
@@ -939,14 +939,18 @@ int repo_find_commit_pos_in_graph(struct repository *r, struct commit *c,
 
 struct commit *lookup_commit_in_graph(struct repository *repo, const struct object_id *id)
 {
+	static int commit_graph_paranoia = -1;
 	struct commit *commit;
 	uint32_t pos;
 
+	if (commit_graph_paranoia == -1)
+		commit_graph_paranoia = git_env_bool(GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA, 1);
+
 	if (!prepare_commit_graph(repo))
 		return NULL;
 	if (!search_commit_pos_in_graph(id, repo->objects->commit_graph, &pos))
 		return NULL;
-	if (!has_object(repo, id, 0))
+	if (commit_graph_paranoia && !has_object(repo, id, 0))
 		return NULL;
 
 	commit = lookup_commit(repo, id);
diff --git a/commit-graph.h b/commit-graph.h
index 20ada7e891..bd4289620c 100644
--- a/commit-graph.h
+++ b/commit-graph.h
@@ -8,6 +8,12 @@
 #define GIT_TEST_COMMIT_GRAPH_DIE_ON_PARSE "GIT_TEST_COMMIT_GRAPH_DIE_ON_PARSE"
 #define GIT_TEST_COMMIT_GRAPH_CHANGED_PATHS "GIT_TEST_COMMIT_GRAPH_CHANGED_PATHS"
 
+/*
+ * This environment variable controls whether commits looked up via the
+ * commit graph will be double checked to exist in the object database.
+ */
+#define GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA "GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA"
+
 /*
  * This method is only used to enhance coverage of the commit-graph
  * feature in the test suite with the GIT_TEST_COMMIT_GRAPH and
diff --git a/t/t5318-commit-graph.sh b/t/t5318-commit-graph.sh
index ba65f17dd9..c0cc454538 100755
--- a/t/t5318-commit-graph.sh
+++ b/t/t5318-commit-graph.sh
@@ -821,4 +821,25 @@ test_expect_success 'overflow during generation version upgrade' '
 	)
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'stale commit cannot be parsed when given directly' '
+	test_when_finished "rm -rf repo" &&
+	git init repo &&
+	(
+		cd repo &&
+		test_commit A &&
+		test_commit B &&
+		git commit-graph write --reachable &&
+
+		oid=$(git rev-parse B) &&
+		rm .git/objects/"$(test_oid_to_path "$oid")" &&
+
+		# Verify that it is possible to read the commit from the
+		# commit graph when not being paranoid, ...
+		GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA=false git rev-list B &&
+		# ... but parsing the commit when double checking that
+		# it actually exists in the object database should fail.
+		test_must_fail git rev-list -1 B
+	)
+'
+
 test_done
-- 
2.42.0
Previous: Patrick SteinhardtNext: Patrick Steinhardt
Message 11 of 18 in “commit-graph: detect commits missing in ODB”
  1. 0/2 commit-graph: detect commits missing in ODBPatrick Steinhardt, Oct 23, 2023
  2. 1/2 commit-graph: introduce envvar to disable commit existence checksPatrick Steinhardt, Oct 23, 2023
  3. Taylor BlauOct 30, 2023
  4. Patrick SteinhardtOct 31, 2023
  5. 2/2 commit: detect commits that exist in commit-graph but not in the ODBPatrick Steinhardt, Oct 23, 2023
  6. Junio C HamanoOct 24, 2023
  7. Taylor BlauOct 30, 2023
  8. Junio C HamanoOct 31, 2023
  9. Taylor BlauOct 30, 2023
  10. 0/2 commit-graph: detect commits missing in ODBPatrick Steinhardt, Oct 31, 2023
  11. 1/2 commit-graph: introduce envvar to disable commit existence checksPatrick Steinhardt, Oct 31, 2023
  12. 2/2 commit: detect commits that exist in commit-graph but not in the ODBPatrick Steinhardt, Oct 31, 2023
  13. Taylor BlauOct 31, 2023
  14. Junio C HamanoOct 31, 2023
  15. Junio C HamanoNov 1, 2023
  16. Patrick SteinhardtNov 1, 2023
  17. Junio C HamanoNov 1, 2023
  18. Junio C HamanoOct 31, 2023

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