annotate tests/test-empty.t @ 23785:cb99bacb9b4e

branchcache: introduce revbranchcache for caching of revision branch names

It is expensive to retrieve the branch name of a revision. Very expensive when
creating a changectx and calling .branch() every time - slightly less when
using changelog.branchinfo().

Now, to speed things up, provide a way to cache the results on disk in an
efficient format. Each branchname is assigned a number, and for each revision
we store the number of the corresponding branch name. The branch names are
stored in a dedicated file which is strictly append only.

Branch names are usually reused across several revisions, and the total list of
branch names will thus be so small that it is feasible to read the whole set of
names before using the cache. It will however do that it might be more
efficient to use the changelog for retrieving the branch info for a single
revision.

The revision entries are stored in another file. This file is usually append
only, but if the repository has been modified, the file will be truncated and
the relevant parts rewritten on demand.

The entries for each revision are 8 bytes each, and the whole revision file
will thus be 1/8 of 00changelog.i.

Each revision entry contains the first 4 bytes of the corresponding node hash.
This is used as a check sum that always is verified before the entry is used.
That check is relatively expensive but it makes sure history modification is
detected and handled correctly. It will also detect and handle most revision
file corruptions.

This is just a cache. A new format can always be introduced if other
requirements or ideas make that seem like a good idea. Rebuilding the cache is
not really more expensive than it was to run for example 'hg log -b branchname'
before this cache was introduced.

This new method is still unused but promise to make some operations several
times faster once it actually is used.

Abandoning Python 2.4 would make it possible to implement this more efficiently
by using struct classes and pack_into. The Python code could probably also be
micro optimized or it could be implemented very efficiently in C where it would
be easy to control the data access.

Create an empty repo:

  $ hg init a
  $ cd a

Try some commands:

  $ hg log
  $ hg grep wah
  [1]
  $ hg manifest
  $ hg verify
  checking changesets
  checking manifests
  crosschecking files in changesets and manifests
  checking files
  0 files, 0 changesets, 0 total revisions

Check the basic files created:

  $ ls .hg
  00changelog.i
  requires
  store

Should be empty:

  $ ls .hg/store

Poke at a clone:

  $ cd ..
  $ hg clone a b
  updating to branch default
  0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
  $ cd b
  $ hg verify
  checking changesets
  checking manifests
  crosschecking files in changesets and manifests
  checking files
  0 files, 0 changesets, 0 total revisions
  $ ls .hg
  00changelog.i
  hgrc
  requires
  store

Should be empty:

  $ ls .hg/store

  $ cd ..