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Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git v2.34.0-rc2

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Nov 11, 2021, 17:32 UTC
Message-ID
<xmqqwnlemwcy.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To
<YY0HbQJEWbOwuuFj@coredump.intra.peff.net>
Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
Show 21 quoted lines
> On Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 04:59:29PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>>  * The revision traversal API has been optimized by taking advantage
>>    of the commit-graph, when available, to determine if a commit is
>>    reachable from any of the existing refs.
>
> I was thinking a bit about this change, specifically f45022dc2f
> (connected: do not sort input revisions, 2021-08-09). At the time, Junio
> said[1]:
>
>   Sorting of positive side is done to help both performance and
>   correctness in regular use of the traversal machinery, especially
>   when reachability bitmap is not in effect, but on the negative side
>   I do not think there is any downside to omit sorting offhand.  The
>   only case that may get affected is when the revision.c::SLOP kicks
>   in to deal with oddball commits with incorrect committer timestamps,
>   but then the result of the sorting isn't to be trusted anyway, so...
>
> But wouldn't failure to sort the commits actually _create_ such an
> "oddball commits" scenario, because we'd see the UNINTERESTING commits
> in an arbitrary order, especially with respect to the interesting ones?
You're right.
Show 7 quoted lines
> So indeed, we get confused by the unsorted input and give the wrong
> answer. We should look at and propagate UNINTERESTING marks from day-9,
> etc on down to day-1, but we don't.
>
> Now in this case, we're sending too much output, which is OK for the
> purposes of the connectivity check. It will just walk day-1 and its
> tree unnecessarily, which is a performance loss but not incorrect.

The primary use of the traversal in check_connected() is when we have new refs we haven't seen, and they go to the positive end of the traversal, which will end in the refs we do have (there may be tons). The idea is that when one or more of the new refs are truly "new" in the sense that one or more the objects necessary to connect them to our refs do not exist, not even in the "not reachable but not yet pruned" state, this traversal will hit a missing object and will error out. So, it is alarming that "day-1" is shown without painted uninteresting via any of the negative [day-4..day-9] commits. Which means, if we are checking if we need to initiate a real fetch to connect day-1 and day-10 to our DAG, when we think we have [day-4..day-9] and everything behind them, we stopped traversal before seeing all the "objects necessary to connect them to our refs". If day-2 were missing in our repository, we would have noticed if we did traversal from sorted tips, but the unsorted traversal happily misses it.

Not that noticing that day-2 is missing from our repository does not help much in *this* particular case, though. It is likely that a common negotiation would say "I have [day-4..day-9], and want day-1 and day-10", that is reponded with "OK, I know enough, here is day-10 and its tree/blob that would be missing from a healthy clone with everything behind day-9", and it won't include day-2 (nor day-1). So in this particular example, it would not matter if the new unsorted traversal is subtly broken (I think the extent of the damage is similar to making the SLOP problem deliberately worse), but I am not sure if there are other failure modes that would yield outright incorrect result.

Show 16 quoted lines
> My intuition is that this is _probably_ the only type of incorrect
> answer we'd give (i.e., that we'd never go the other way, omitting an
> object we should have included) because nobody would ever set the
> UNINTERESTING flag unnecessarily, and everybody_uninteresting() does do
> a full scan looking for any positive tips.
>
> Still, I didn't see this subtlety mentioned in the earlier discussion,
> and it's a bit alarming not to understand all of the possible
> implications. I'm not sure if it rises to the level of something we want
> to consider more or address before the release. Sorry to only come up
> with this at the -rc2 stage, but I figure now is better than right after
> the release. ;)
>
> -Peff
>
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqa6lzwu31.fsf@gitster.g/

We probably should revert this step as it can affect correctness in a big way, but I wonder if the other steps in the same series, or other topic that came later, rely on it.

At the very least, I think this may be prudent during -rc period, but on the other hand, I do not know offhand what would later pursuade us to reinstate it and convince us that it is a safe thing to do.

 connected.c | 1 -
 1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)
diff --git c/connected.c w/connected.c
index cf68e37a97..35bd4a2638 100644
--- c/connected.c
+++ w/connected.c
@@ -107,7 +107,6 @@ int check_connected(oid_iterate_fn fn, void *cb_data,
 	if (opt->progress)
 		strvec_pushf(&rev_list.args, "--progress=%s",
 			     _("Checking connectivity"));
-	strvec_push(&rev_list.args, "--unsorted-input");
 
 	rev_list.git_cmd = 1;
 	rev_list.env = opt->env;
Previous: Jeff KingNext: Jeff King
Message 17 of 23 in “[ANNOUNCE] Git v2.34.0-rc2”
  1. Junio C HamanoNov 10, 2021
  2. Jeff KingNov 10, 2021
  3. Jeff KingNov 10, 2021
  4. Carlo ArenasNov 10, 2021
  5. Jeff KingNov 10, 2021
  6. Carlo ArenasNov 10, 2021
  7. Jeff KingNov 10, 2021
  8. RelNotes: mention known crasher when ssh signing with OpenSSH 8.7Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón, Nov 10, 2021
  9. Junio C HamanoNov 10, 2021
  10. Junio C HamanoNov 10, 2021
  11. Jeff KingNov 11, 2021
  12. Junio C HamanoNov 10, 2021
  13. Johannes AltmanningerNov 10, 2021
  14. Jeff KingNov 10, 2021
  15. Junio C HamanoNov 10, 2021
  16. Jeff KingNov 11, 2021
  17. Junio C HamanoNov 11, 2021
  18. Jeff KingNov 11, 2021
  19. Junio C HamanoNov 11, 2021
  20. Patrick SteinhardtNov 15, 2021
  21. Jeff KingNov 15, 2021
  22. Jeff KingNov 15, 2021
  23. Junio C HamanoNov 13, 2021

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

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