threads / patch / 63538

patchpromisor-remote: remove the promisor object check for failed fetch

Subject: [PATCH] promisor-remote: remove the promisor object check for failed fetch

## tl;dr

3 messages between May 28, 2025 and May 30, 2025. Diffs are folded; open one to read it.

replies: 2people: 2as markdown or json

Han Young· May 28, 2025, 09:58 UTC · lore

If the promisor objects fail to fetch, we check the remaining objects to see if they are indeed promisor objects. Then, we die on the first remaining promisor object. However, this promisor object check is unnecessary because callers of promisor_remote_get_direct already filter out local objects. All objects passed to promisor_remote_get_direct are promisor objects.

The is_promisor_object check essentially iterates through every object in the local packfiles and adds them to an oid set. This process is agonizingly slow for large repositories. Remove the check so that we fail immediately.

Signed-off-by: Han Young <hanyang.tony@bytedance.com>
---
 promisor-remote.c | 8 +++-----
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
Show changes to promisor-remote.c +3 −5
diff --git a/promisor-remote.c b/promisor-remote.c
index 9d058586df..f42ea4ce78 100644
--- a/promisor-remote.c
+++ b/promisor-remote.c
@@ -275,7 +275,6 @@ void promisor_remote_get_direct(struct repository *repo,
 	struct object_id *remaining_oids = (struct object_id *)oids;
 	int remaining_nr = oid_nr;
 	int to_free = 0;
-	int i;
 
 	if (oid_nr == 0)
 		return;
@@ -296,10 +295,9 @@ void promisor_remote_get_direct(struct repository *repo,
 		goto all_fetched;
 	}
 
-	for (i = 0; i < remaining_nr; i++) {
-		if (is_promisor_object(repo, &remaining_oids[i]))
-			die(_("could not fetch %s from promisor remote"),
-			    oid_to_hex(&remaining_oids[i]));
+	if (remaining_nr) {
+		die(_("could not fetch %s from promisor remote"),
+			oid_to_hex(&remaining_oids[0]));
 	}
 
 all_fetched:
-- 
2.48.1
Junio C Hamano· May 29, 2025, 15:23 UTC · re: Han Young · lore

Re: [PATCH] promisor-remote: remove the promisor object check for failed fetch

Han Young <hanyang.tony@bytedance.com> writes:
Show 11 quoted lines
> If the promisor objects fail to fetch, we check the remaining objects
> to see if they are indeed promisor objects. Then, we die on the first
> remaining promisor object. However, this promisor object check is 
> unnecessary because callers of promisor_remote_get_direct already filter
> out local objects. All objects passed to promisor_remote_get_direct are
> promisor objects.
>
> The is_promisor_object check essentially iterates through every object
> in the local packfiles and adds them to an oid set. This process is
> agonizingly slow for large repositories.
> Remove the check so that we fail immediately.

Thanks for CC'ing Christian and Jonathan Tan, who may indeed be good reviewers for this change.

let me think aloud a bit, but because I haven't looked at this part of the system for quite some time, what I mumble may not make much sense. Please bear with me.

So the incoming list remaining_oids[] is what was already filtered by the caller and everything in it should be promisor? If so ...

> -	for (i = 0; i < remaining_nr; i++) {
> -		if (is_promisor_object(repo, &remaining_oids[i]))
> -			die(_("could not fetch %s from promisor remote"),
> -			    oid_to_hex(&remaining_oids[i]));

... the first iteration of this loop, after is_promisor_object() says the object is a promisor object (which is guaranteed if everybody in that remaining_oids[] array is promisor object), will die immediately. So your "agonizingly slow" comes from just one single call to is_promisor_object() function is ultra slow?

If that is the case, the patch, including the above explanation, makes perfect sense (note that I didn't verify the "everybody in the remaining_oids[] array is guaranteed to be a promisor object" claim myself, though).

But at the same time, it sounds like is_promisor_object() seriously is wrong. Perhaps we need to tell pack-objects to pre-compute the packfile.c:add_promisor_object() stuff and cache the result in an on-disk file, just like reverse index is stored in an auxiliary file?

What do the callers of the function use to "filter out local objects" to ensure that "all objects passed ... are promisor objects" do? Have they already spent agonizingly large amount of time to do so? I sampled a few existing callers but they do not explicitly restrict what they throw at the function to promisor objects---they prepare an oid array, throw anything they do not see locally in the array and call this function. So objects in the array are either promisor objects or missing due to repository corruption---we simply cannot tell. I suspect that the claim "everything the caller calls the function with is a promisor object" is not exactly correct.

The end-result when remaining_nr is not zero (i.e., some objects that the caller wanted us to be fetched) would not exactly be the same. The function used to die only when the object we failed to obtain was what a promisor remote promised to give us. With this change, we also die when an object the caller asked us to fetch is not promised by any promisor. I do not know what the implication of this behaviour change would be. Reviewers, comments?

> +	if (remaining_nr) {
> +		die(_("could not fetch %s from promisor remote"),
> +			oid_to_hex(&remaining_oids[0]));
>  	}
Han Young· May 30, 2025, 13:26 UTC · re: Junio C Hamano · lore

Re: [External] Re: [PATCH] promisor-remote: remove the promisor object check for failed fetch

On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 11:23 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> So your "agonizingly slow" comes from just one
> single call to is_promisor_object() function is ultra slow?

That's correct, is_promisor_object() function constructs the promisor objects oid set by iterating through every object in the promisor packfiles and calling add_promisor_object() function for each object. add_promisor_object() function parses the object, adds itself and the objects it refers to to the oid set. For a very large partial clone repository, the promisor packfiles will contain millions of objects. Parsing each one takes a considerable amount of time.

Show 5 quoted lines
> But at the same time, it sounds like is_promisor_object() seriously
> is wrong.  Perhaps we need to tell pack-objects to pre-compute the
> packfile.c:add_promisor_object() stuff and cache the result in an
> on-disk file, just like reverse index is stored in an auxiliary
> file?

As Calvin summarized in this thread [1], creating a promisor object set is very expensive. The fact that a local object can become a "promisor object" makes disk caching infeasible. is_promisor_object() function is not inherently wrong, it's the definition of "promisor object" that makes implementation difficult.

> What do the callers of the function use to "filter out local
> objects" to ensure that "all objects passed ... are promisor
> objects" do?  Have they already spent agonizingly large amount of
> time to do so?

They call oid_object_info_extended() function to check whether the object exists in the local storage. Only objects that do not exist locally are sent to promisor_remote_get_direct().

Show 5 quoted lines
> So objects in the
> array are either promisor objects or missing due to repository
> corruption---we simply cannot tell.  I suspect that the claim
> "everything the caller calls the function with is a promisor object"
> is not exactly correct.

You are right that objects that are not present in the local repository do not equal promisor objects. The array could contain missing objects that are not promisor objects.

Show 7 quoted lines
> The end-result when remaining_nr is not zero (i.e., some objects
> that the caller wanted us to be fetched) would not exactly be the
> same.  The function used to die only when the object we failed to
> obtain was what a promisor remote promised to give us.  With this
> change, we also die when an object the caller asked us to fetch is
> not promised by any promisor.  I do not know what the implication
> of this behaviour change would be.

I tested this patch with git-cat-file and git-diff on a repository missing a normal object. The commands fail regardless of the patch, but the error message is different. The message changed from fatal: Not a valid object name to fatal: could not fetch ... from promisor remote

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAFySSZCyoaKCGycYgJjCJGJ2mV1yfg+gVFb7RytGKmkjupkNkQ@mail.gmail.com/

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