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-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt6
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-tree-walking.txt8
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt117
3 files changed, 92 insertions, 39 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt
index 5abb8e8b1f..76b6e4f71b 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt
@@ -111,11 +111,11 @@ marked. If you to exclude files, make sure you have loaded index first.
* Prepare `struct dir_struct dir` and clear it with `memset(&dir, 0,
sizeof(dir))`.
-* To add single exclude pattern, call `add_exclude_list()` and then
- `add_exclude()`.
+* To add single exclude pattern, call `add_pattern_list()` and then
+ `add_pattern()`.
* To add patterns from a file (e.g. `.git/info/exclude`), call
- `add_excludes_from_file()` , and/or set `dir.exclude_per_dir`. A
+ `add_patterns_from_file()` , and/or set `dir.exclude_per_dir`. A
short-hand function `setup_standard_excludes()` can be used to set
up the standard set of exclude settings.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-tree-walking.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-tree-walking.txt
index bde18622a8..7962e32854 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-tree-walking.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-tree-walking.txt
@@ -62,9 +62,7 @@ Initializing
`setup_traverse_info`::
Initialize a `traverse_info` given the pathname of the tree to start
- traversing from. The `base` argument is assumed to be the `path`
- member of the `name_entry` being recursed into unless the tree is a
- top-level tree in which case the empty string ("") is used.
+ traversing from.
Walking
-------
@@ -140,6 +138,10 @@ same in the next callback invocation.
This utilizes the memory structure of a tree entry to avoid the
overhead of using a generic strlen().
+`strbuf_make_traverse_path`::
+
+ Convenience wrapper to `make_traverse_path` into a strbuf.
+
Authors
-------
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt b/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt
index 896c7b3878..210373e258 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt
@@ -30,12 +30,20 @@ advance* during clone and fetch operations and thereby reduce download
times and disk usage. Missing objects can later be "demand fetched"
if/when needed.
+A remote that can later provide the missing objects is called a
+promisor remote, as it promises to send the objects when
+requested. Initialy Git supported only one promisor remote, the origin
+remote from which the user cloned and that was configured in the
+"extensions.partialClone" config option. Later support for more than
+one promisor remote has been implemented.
+
Use of partial clone requires that the user be online and the origin
-remote be available for on-demand fetching of missing objects. This may
-or may not be problematic for the user. For example, if the user can
-stay within the pre-selected subset of the source tree, they may not
-encounter any missing objects. Alternatively, the user could try to
-pre-fetch various objects if they know that they are going offline.
+remote or other promisor remotes be available for on-demand fetching
+of missing objects. This may or may not be problematic for the user.
+For example, if the user can stay within the pre-selected subset of
+the source tree, they may not encounter any missing objects.
+Alternatively, the user could try to pre-fetch various objects if they
+know that they are going offline.
Non-Goals
@@ -100,18 +108,18 @@ or commits that reference missing trees.
Handling Missing Objects
------------------------
-- An object may be missing due to a partial clone or fetch, or missing due
- to repository corruption. To differentiate these cases, the local
- repository specially indicates such filtered packfiles obtained from the
- promisor remote as "promisor packfiles".
+- An object may be missing due to a partial clone or fetch, or missing
+ due to repository corruption. To differentiate these cases, the
+ local repository specially indicates such filtered packfiles
+ obtained from promisor remotes as "promisor packfiles".
+
These promisor packfiles consist of a "<name>.promisor" file with
arbitrary contents (like the "<name>.keep" files), in addition to
their "<name>.pack" and "<name>.idx" files.
- The local repository considers a "promisor object" to be an object that
- it knows (to the best of its ability) that the promisor remote has promised
- that it has, either because the local repository has that object in one of
+ it knows (to the best of its ability) that promisor remotes have promised
+ that they have, either because the local repository has that object in one of
its promisor packfiles, or because another promisor object refers to it.
+
When Git encounters a missing object, Git can see if it is a promisor object
@@ -123,12 +131,12 @@ expensive-to-modify list of missing objects.[a]
- Since almost all Git code currently expects any referenced object to be
present locally and because we do not want to force every command to do
a dry-run first, a fallback mechanism is added to allow Git to attempt
- to dynamically fetch missing objects from the promisor remote.
+ to dynamically fetch missing objects from promisor remotes.
+
When the normal object lookup fails to find an object, Git invokes
-fetch-object to try to get the object from the server and then retry
-the object lookup. This allows objects to be "faulted in" without
-complicated prediction algorithms.
+promisor_remote_get_direct() to try to get the object from a promisor
+remote and then retry the object lookup. This allows objects to be
+"faulted in" without complicated prediction algorithms.
+
For efficiency reasons, no check as to whether the missing object is
actually a promisor object is performed.
@@ -157,8 +165,7 @@ and prefetch those objects in bulk.
+
We are not happy with this global variable and would like to remove it,
but that requires significant refactoring of the object code to pass an
-additional flag. We hope that concurrent efforts to add an ODB API can
-encompass this.
+additional flag.
Fetching Missing Objects
@@ -182,21 +189,63 @@ has been updated to not use any object flags when the corresponding argument
though they are not necessary.
+Using many promisor remotes
+---------------------------
+
+Many promisor remotes can be configured and used.
+
+This allows for example a user to have multiple geographically-close
+cache servers for fetching missing blobs while continuing to do
+filtered `git-fetch` commands from the central server.
+
+When fetching objects, promisor remotes are tried one after the other
+until all the objects have been fetched.
+
+Remotes that are considered "promisor" remotes are those specified by
+the following configuration variables:
+
+- `extensions.partialClone = <name>`
+
+- `remote.<name>.promisor = true`
+
+- `remote.<name>.partialCloneFilter = ...`
+
+Only one promisor remote can be configured using the
+`extensions.partialClone` config variable. This promisor remote will
+be the last one tried when fetching objects.
+
+We decided to make it the last one we try, because it is likely that
+someone using many promisor remotes is doing so because the other
+promisor remotes are better for some reason (maybe they are closer or
+faster for some kind of objects) than the origin, and the origin is
+likely to be the remote specified by extensions.partialClone.
+
+This justification is not very strong, but one choice had to be made,
+and anyway the long term plan should be to make the order somehow
+fully configurable.
+
+For now though the other promisor remotes will be tried in the order
+they appear in the config file.
+
Current Limitations
-------------------
-- The remote used for a partial clone (or the first partial fetch
- following a regular clone) is marked as the "promisor remote".
+- It is not possible to specify the order in which the promisor
+ remotes are tried in other ways than the order in which they appear
+ in the config file.
+
-We are currently limited to a single promisor remote and only that
-remote may be used for subsequent partial fetches.
+It is also not possible to specify an order to be used when fetching
+from one remote and a different order when fetching from another
+remote.
+
+- It is not possible to push only specific objects to a promisor
+ remote.
+
-We accept this limitation because we believe initial users of this
-feature will be using it on repositories with a strong single central
-server.
+It is not possible to push at the same time to multiple promisor
+remote in a specific order.
-- Dynamic object fetching will only ask the promisor remote for missing
- objects. We assume that the promisor remote has a complete view of the
+- Dynamic object fetching will only ask promisor remotes for missing
+ objects. We assume that promisor remotes have a complete view of the
repository and can satisfy all such requests.
- Repack essentially treats promisor and non-promisor packfiles as 2
@@ -218,15 +267,17 @@ server.
Future Work
-----------
-- Allow more than one promisor remote and define a strategy for fetching
- missing objects from specific promisor remotes or of iterating over the
- set of promisor remotes until a missing object is found.
+- Improve the way to specify the order in which promisor remotes are
+ tried.
+
-A user might want to have multiple geographically-close cache servers
-for fetching missing blobs while continuing to do filtered `git-fetch`
-commands from the central server, for example.
+For example this could allow to specify explicitly something like:
+"When fetching from this remote, I want to use these promisor remotes
+in this order, though, when pushing or fetching to that remote, I want
+to use those promisor remotes in that order."
+
+- Allow pushing to promisor remotes.
+
-Or the user might want to work in a triangular work flow with multiple
+The user might want to work in a triangular work flow with multiple
promisor remotes that each have an incomplete view of the repository.
- Allow repack to work on promisor packfiles (while keeping them distinct