commit-reach: use one walk in remove_redundant()

The current implementation of remove_redundant() uses several calls to
paint_down_to_common() to determine that commits are independent of each
other. This leads to quadratic behavior when many inputs are passed to
commands such as 'git merge-base'.

For example, in the Linux kernel repository, I tested the performance
by passing all tags:

 git merge-base --independent $(git for-each-ref refs/tags --format="$(refname)")

(Note: I had to delete the tags v2.6.11-tree and v2.6.11 as they do
not point to commits.)

Here is the performance improvement introduced by this change:

 Before: 16.4s
  After:  1.1s

This performance improvement requires the commit-graph file to be
present. We keep the old algorithm around as remove_redundant_no_gen()
and use it when generation_numbers_enabled() is false. This is similar
to other algorithms within commit-reach.c. The new algorithm is
implemented in remove_redundant_with_gen().

The basic approach is to do one commit walk instead of many. First, scan
all commits in the list and mark their _parents_ with the STALE flag.
This flag will indicate commits that are reachable from one of the
inputs, except not including themselves. Then, walk commits until
covering all commits up to the minimum generation number pushing the
STALE flag throughout.

At the end, we need to clear the STALE bit from all of the commits
we walked. We move the non-stale commits in 'array' to the beginning of
the list, and this might overwrite stale commits. However, we store an
array of commits that started the walk, and use clear_commit_marks() on
each of those starting commits. That method will walk the reachable
commits with the STALE bit and clear them all. This makes the algorithm
safe for re-entry or for other uses of those commits after this walk.

This logic is covered by tests in t6600-test-reach.sh, so the behavior
does not change. This is tested both in the case with a commit-graph and
without.

Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions