# RFA: untracked cache vs git reset --hard 2 messages from 2017-05-03 to 2017-05-03. Participants: Johannes Schindelin, Duy Nguyen. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/45858 ## Johannes Schindelin, 2017-05-03 10:27 Subject: RFA: untracked cache vs git reset --hard Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.DEB.2.20.1705031202470.3480%40virtualbox ``` Hi all, I have a problem and would like to solicit advice how to fix it. The untracked cache has made a real difference on rather large repositories with tons of directories, and it is really, really useful. But. One innocuous `git reset --hard` will just blow it away. How? reset_index() calls unpack_trees() which in turn tries to populate a new index and then discards the old one: https://github.com/git/git/blob/v2.12.2/unpack-trees.c#L1293 That discard_index() unfortunately also blows away each and every index extension that had been read carefully before. All users of `git reset --hard` (including `git stash`) suffer this. In fact, it looks as if *any* caller of unpack_trees() would suffer the same problem: git-am, git-checkout, git-commit, git-merge, etc Now, I could imagine that maybe we could just "move" o->dst_index.untracked to o->result.untracked, and that the machinery then would do the right thing. However, I am far from an expert in this area, so I would appreciate all the helpful advice I could get. Thoughts? Thanks, Johannes ``` ## Duy Nguyen, 2017-05-03 10:54 Subject: Re: RFA: untracked cache vs git reset --hard Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CACsJy8BasKLSuMuoqT1MNWbp93qxuG1Z%2BauiM6SaN7fBYT8sFw%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 5:27 PM, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > Hi all, > > I have a problem and would like to solicit advice how to fix it. > > The untracked cache has made a real difference on rather large > repositories with tons of directories, and it is really, really useful. > > But. One innocuous `git reset --hard` will just blow it away. > > How? reset_index() calls unpack_trees() which in turn tries to populate a > new index and then discards the old one: > > https://github.com/git/git/blob/v2.12.2/unpack-trees.c#L1293 > > That discard_index() unfortunately also blows away each and every index > extension that had been read carefully before. This is a real problem when we introduce non-optional extensions (i.e. extension name in lower case). Dropping them is not an option because they may contain vital/original information. We haven't any so far, but I've been wanting to add one for years (narrow clone). So I'm all for tackling the problem now :) > All users of `git reset --hard` (including `git stash`) suffer this. > > In fact, it looks as if *any* caller of unpack_trees() would suffer the > same problem: git-am, git-checkout, git-commit, git-merge, etc > > Now, I could imagine that maybe we could just "move" > o->dst_index.untracked to o->result.untracked, and that the machinery then > would do the right thing. These extensions may have dependencies in the o->result.cache[] (do we allow an extension to depend on another?). If invalidation is not handled correctly then it's not safe to simply copy the extension over. For untracked cache, I think we do invalidation right and just moving it over dst_index (and resetting NULL in o->result so it does not get accidentally deleted) is fine. I'd rather we have a common way of dealing with this for any extension though. Split index needs special treatment too [1]. Maybe we can add int migrate_index_extensions(struct index_state *dst, struct index_state *src); in read-cache.c where it calls migrate_XXX() for each extension. In some cases (cache-tree) we could even do more, like repair cache-tree there to avoid hitting performance regressions. [1] https://github.com/git/git/blob/v2.12.2/unpack-trees.c#L1165-L1167 -- Duy ```