mercurial/help/diffs.txt

copies: avoid instancing more changectx to access parent revisions

We just need to know the revision numbers of the parents, creating full context
is needlessly expensive.

This provide a small, but noticeable performance boost.

revision: large amount; added files: large amount; rename small amount; c3b14617fbd7 9ba6ab77fd29
before: ! wall 2.885636 comb 2.900000 user 2.870000 sys 0.030000 (median of 10)
after:  ! wall 2.702270 comb 2.710000 user 2.690000 sys 0.020000 (median of 10)
revision: large amount; added files: small amount; rename small amount; c3b14617fbd7 f650a9b140d2
before: ! wall 4.298271 comb 4.290000 user 4.240000 sys 0.050000 (median of 10)
after:  ! wall 3.976610 comb 3.970000 user 3.920000 sys 0.050000 (median of 10)
revision: large amount; added files: large amount; rename large amount; 08ea3258278e d9fa043f30c0
before: ! wall 0.773397 comb 0.770000 user 0.770000 sys 0.000000 (median of 11)
after:  ! wall 0.701634 comb 0.700000 user 0.700000 sys 0.000000 (median of 13)
revision: small amount; added files: large amount; rename large amount; df6f7a526b60 a83dc6a2d56f
before: ! wall 0.013585 comb 0.010000 user 0.010000 sys 0.000000 (median of 217)
after:  ! wall 0.013550 comb 0.010000 user 0.010000 sys 0.000000 (median of 218)
revision: small amount; added files: large amount; rename small amount; 4aa4e1f8e19a 169138063d63
before: ! wall 0.003202 comb 0.000000 user 0.000000 sys 0.000000 (median of 929)
after:  ! wall 0.002993 comb 0.010000 user 0.010000 sys 0.000000 (median of 992)
revision: small amount; added files: small amount; rename small amount; 4bc173b045a6 964879152e2e
before: ! wall 0.000077 comb 0.000000 user 0.000000 sys 0.000000 (median of 12060)
after:  ! wall 0.000072 comb 0.000000 user 0.000000 sys 0.000000 (median of 12804)
revision: medium amount; added files: large amount; rename medium amount; c95f1ced15f2 2c68e87c3efe
before: ! wall 0.510614 comb 0.500000 user 0.500000 sys 0.000000 (median of 18)
after:  ! wall 0.473681 comb 0.470000 user 0.470000 sys 0.000000 (median of 20)
revision: medium amount; added files: medium amount; rename small amount; d343da0c55a8 d7746d32bf9d
before: ! wall 0.126552 comb 0.130000 user 0.130000 sys 0.000000 (median of 77)
after:  ! wall 0.115240 comb 0.110000 user 0.110000 sys 0.000000 (median of 85)

Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D7122

Mercurial's default format for showing changes between two versions of
a file is compatible with the unified format of GNU diff, which can be
used by GNU patch and many other standard tools.

While this standard format is often enough, it does not encode the
following information:

- executable status and other permission bits
- copy or rename information
- changes in binary files
- creation or deletion of empty files

Mercurial also supports the extended diff format from the git VCS
which addresses these limitations. The git diff format is not produced
by default because a few widespread tools still do not understand this
format.

This means that when generating diffs from a Mercurial repository
(e.g. with :hg:`export`), you should be careful about things like file
copies and renames or other things mentioned above, because when
applying a standard diff to a different repository, this extra
information is lost. Mercurial's internal operations (like push and
pull) are not affected by this, because they use an internal binary
format for communicating changes.

To make Mercurial produce the git extended diff format, use the --git
option available for many commands, or set 'git = True' in the [diff]
section of your configuration file. You do not need to set this option
when importing diffs in this format or using them in the mq extension.