view tests/test-excessive-merge.t @ 26623:5a95fe44121d

clonebundles: support for seeding clones from pre-generated bundles

Cloning can be an expensive operation for servers because the server
generates a bundle from existing repository data at request time. For
a large repository like mozilla-central, this consumes 4+ minutes
of CPU time on the server. It also results in significant network
utilization. Multiplied by hundreds or even thousands of clients and
the ensuing load can result in difficulties scaling the Mercurial server.

Despite generation of bundles being deterministic until the next
changeset is added, the generation of bundles to service a clone request
is not cached. Each clone thus performs redundant work. This is
wasteful.

This patch introduces the "clonebundles" extension and related
client-side functionality to help alleviate this deficiency. The
client-side feature is behind an experimental flag and is not enabled by
default.

It works as follows:

1) Server operator generates a bundle and makes it available on a
   server (likely HTTP).
2) Server operator defines the URL of a bundle file in a
   .hg/clonebundles.manifest file.
3) Client `hg clone`ing sees the server is advertising bundle URLs.
4) Client fetches and applies the advertised bundle.
5) Client performs equivalent of `hg pull` to fetch changes made since
   the bundle was created.

Essentially, the server performs the expensive work of generating a
bundle once and all subsequent clones fetch a static file from
somewhere. Scaling static file serving is a much more manageable
problem than scaling a Python application like Mercurial. Assuming your
repository grows less than 1% per day, the end result is 99+% of CPU
and network load from clones is eliminated, allowing Mercurial servers
to scale more easily. Serving static files also means data can be
transferred to clients as fast as they can consume it, rather than as
fast as servers can generate it. This makes clones faster.

Mozilla has implemented similar functionality of this patch on
hg.mozilla.org using a custom extension. We are hosting bundle files in
Amazon S3 and CloudFront (a CDN) and have successfully offloaded
>1 TB/day in data transfer from hg.mozilla.org, freeing up significant
bandwidth and CPU resources. The positive impact has been stellar and
I believe it has proved its value to be included in Mercurial core. I
feel it is important for the client-side support to be enabled in core
by default because it means that clients will get faster, more reliable
clones and will enable server operators to reduce load without
requiring any client-side configuration changes (assuming clients are
up to date, of course).

The scope of this feature is narrowly and specifically tailored to
cloning, despite "serve pulls from pre-generated bundles" being a valid
and useful feature. I would eventually like for Mercurial servers to
support transferring *all* repository data via statically hosted files.
You could imagine a server that siphons all pushed data to bundle files
and instructs clients to apply a stream of bundles to reconstruct all
repository data. This feature, while useful and powerful, is
significantly more work to implement because it requires the server
component have awareness of discovery and a mapping of which changesets
are in which files. Full, clone bundles, by contrast, are much simpler.

The wire protocol command is named "clonebundles" instead of something
more generic like "staticbundles" to leave the door open for a new, more
powerful and more generic server-side component with minimal backwards
compatibility implications. The name "bundleclone" is used by Mozilla's
extension and would cause problems since there are subtle differences
in Mozilla's extension.

Mozilla's experience with this idea has taught us that some form of
"content negotiation" is required. Not all clients will support all
bundle formats or even URLs (advanced TLS requirements, etc). To ensure
the highest uptake possible, a server needs to advertise multiple
versions of bundles and clients need to be able to choose the most
appropriate from that list one. The "attributes" in each
server-advertised entry facilitate this filtering and sorting. Their
use will become apparent in subsequent patches.

Initial inspiration and credit for the idea of cloning from static files
belongs to Augie Fackler and his "lookaside clone" extension proof of
concept.

  $ hg init

  $ echo foo > a
  $ echo foo > b
  $ hg add a b

  $ hg ci -m "test"

  $ echo blah > a

  $ hg ci -m "branch a"

  $ hg co 0
  1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

  $ echo blah > b

  $ hg ci -m "branch b"
  created new head
  $ HGMERGE=true hg merge 1
  1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
  (branch merge, don't forget to commit)

  $ hg ci -m "merge b/a -> blah"

  $ hg co 1
  1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
  $ HGMERGE=true hg merge 2
  1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
  (branch merge, don't forget to commit)
  $ hg ci -m "merge a/b -> blah"
  created new head

  $ hg log
  changeset:   4:2ee31f665a86
  tag:         tip
  parent:      1:96155394af80
  parent:      2:92cc4c306b19
  user:        test
  date:        Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
  summary:     merge a/b -> blah
  
  changeset:   3:e16a66a37edd
  parent:      2:92cc4c306b19
  parent:      1:96155394af80
  user:        test
  date:        Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
  summary:     merge b/a -> blah
  
  changeset:   2:92cc4c306b19
  parent:      0:5e0375449e74
  user:        test
  date:        Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
  summary:     branch b
  
  changeset:   1:96155394af80
  user:        test
  date:        Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
  summary:     branch a
  
  changeset:   0:5e0375449e74
  user:        test
  date:        Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
  summary:     test
  
  $ hg debugindex --changelog
     rev    offset  length  ..... linkrev nodeid       p1           p2 (re)
       0         0      60  .....       0 5e0375449e74 000000000000 000000000000 (re)
       1        60      62  .....       1 96155394af80 5e0375449e74 000000000000 (re)
       2       122      62  .....       2 92cc4c306b19 5e0375449e74 000000000000 (re)
       3       184      69  .....       3 e16a66a37edd 92cc4c306b19 96155394af80 (re)
       4       253      29  .....       4 2ee31f665a86 96155394af80 92cc4c306b19 (re)

revision 1
  $ hg manifest --debug 1
  79d7492df40aa0fa093ec4209be78043c181f094 644   a
  2ed2a3912a0b24502043eae84ee4b279c18b90dd 644   b
revision 2
  $ hg manifest --debug 2
  2ed2a3912a0b24502043eae84ee4b279c18b90dd 644   a
  79d7492df40aa0fa093ec4209be78043c181f094 644   b
revision 3
  $ hg manifest --debug 3
  79d7492df40aa0fa093ec4209be78043c181f094 644   a
  79d7492df40aa0fa093ec4209be78043c181f094 644   b
revision 4
  $ hg manifest --debug 4
  79d7492df40aa0fa093ec4209be78043c181f094 644   a
  79d7492df40aa0fa093ec4209be78043c181f094 644   b

  $ hg debugindex a
     rev    offset  length  ..... linkrev nodeid       p1           p2 (re)
       0         0       5  .....       0 2ed2a3912a0b 000000000000 000000000000 (re)
       1         5       6  .....       1 79d7492df40a 2ed2a3912a0b 000000000000 (re)

  $ hg verify
  checking changesets
  checking manifests
  crosschecking files in changesets and manifests
  checking files
  2 files, 5 changesets, 4 total revisions