view mercurial/help/extensions.txt @ 26379:39d643252b9f

revlog: use existing file handle when reading during _addrevision

_addrevision() may need to read from revlogs as part of computing
deltas. Previously, we would flush existing file handles and open
a new, short-lived file handle to perform the reading.

If we have an existing file handle, it seems logical to reuse it
for reading instead of opening a new file handle. This patch
makes that the new behavior.

After this patch, revlog files are only reopened when adding
revisions if the revlog is switched from inline to non-inline.

On Linux when unbundling a bundle of the mozilla-central repo, this
patch has the following impact on system call counts:

Call     Before     After       Delta
write    827,639    673,390   -154,249
open     700,103    684,089    -16,014
read      74,489     74,489          0
fstat    493,924    461,896    -32,028
close    249,131    233,117    -16,014
stat     242,001    242,001          0
lstat     18,676     18,676          0
lseek     20,268     20,268          0
ioctl     14,652     13,173     -1,479
TOTAL  3,180,758  2,930,679   -250,079

It's worth noting that many of the open() calls fail due to missing
files. That's why there are many more open() calls than close().

Despite the significant system call reduction, this change does not
seem to have a significant performance impact on Linux.

On Windows 10 (not a VM, on a SSD), this patch appears to reduce
unbundle time for mozilla-central from ~960s to ~920s. This isn't
as significant as I was hoping. But a decrease it is nonetheless.
Still, Windows unbundle performance is still >2x slower than Linux.

Despite the lack of significant gains, fewer system calls is fewer
system calls. If nothing else, this will narrow the focus of potential
areas to optimize in the future.

Mercurial has the ability to add new features through the use of
extensions. Extensions may add new commands, add options to
existing commands, change the default behavior of commands, or
implement hooks.

To enable the "foo" extension, either shipped with Mercurial or in the
Python search path, create an entry for it in your configuration file,
like this::

  [extensions]
  foo =

You may also specify the full path to an extension::

  [extensions]
  myfeature = ~/.hgext/myfeature.py

See :hg:`help config` for more information on configuration files.

Extensions are not loaded by default for a variety of reasons:
they can increase startup overhead; they may be meant for advanced
usage only; they may provide potentially dangerous abilities (such
as letting you destroy or modify history); they might not be ready
for prime time; or they may alter some usual behaviors of stock
Mercurial. It is thus up to the user to activate extensions as
needed.

To explicitly disable an extension enabled in a configuration file of
broader scope, prepend its path with !::

  [extensions]
  # disabling extension bar residing in /path/to/extension/bar.py
  bar = !/path/to/extension/bar.py
  # ditto, but no path was supplied for extension baz
  baz = !