index-pack: kill union delta_base to save memory

Once we know the number of objects in the input pack, we allocate an
array of nr_objects of struct delta_entry. On x86-64, this struct is
32 bytes long. The union delta_base, which is part of struct
delta_entry, provides enough space to store either ofs-delta (8 bytes)
or ref-delta (20 bytes).

Because ofs-delta encoding is more efficient space-wise and more
performant at runtime than ref-delta encoding, Git packers try to use
ofs-delta whenever possible, and it is expected that objects encoded
as ref-delta are minority.

In the best clone case where no ref-delta object is present, we waste
(20-8) * nr_objects bytes because of this union. That's about 38MB out
of 100MB for deltas[] with 3.4M objects, or 38%. deltas[] would be
around 62MB without the waste.

This patch attempts to eliminate that. deltas[] array is split into
two: one for ofs-delta and one for ref-delta. Many functions are also
duplicated because of this split. With this patch, ofs_deltas[] array
takes 51MB. ref_deltas[] should remain unallocated in clone case (0
bytes). This array grows as we see ref-delta. We save about half in
this case, or 25% of total bookkeeping.

The saving is more than the calculation above because some padding in
the old delta_entry struct is removed. ofs_delta_entry is 16 bytes,
including the 4 bytes padding. That's 13MB for padding, but packing
the struct could break platforms that do not support unaligned
access. If someone on 32-bit is really low on memory and only deals
with packs smaller than 2G, using 32-bit off_t would eliminate the
padding and save 27MB on top.

A note about ofs_deltas allocation. We could use ref_deltas memory
allocation strategy for ofs_deltas. But that probably just adds more
overhead on top. ofs-deltas are generally the majority (1/2 to 2/3) in
any pack. Incremental realloc may lead to too many memcpy. And if we
preallocate, say 1/2 or 2/3 of nr_objects initially, the growth rate
of ALLOC_GROW() could make this array larger than nr_objects, wasting
more memory.

Brought-up-by: Matthew Sporleder <msporleder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions