view tests/test-obsolete-tag-cache.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.

  $ cat >> $HGRCPATH << EOF
  > [extensions]
  > blackbox=
  > rebase=
  > mock=$TESTDIR/mockblackbox.py
  > 
  > [experimental]
  > evolution = createmarkers
  > EOF

Create a repo with some tags

  $ hg init repo
  $ cd repo
  $ echo initial > foo
  $ hg -q commit -A -m initial
  $ hg tag -m 'test tag' test1
  $ echo first > first
  $ hg -q commit -A -m first
  $ hg tag -m 'test2 tag' test2
  $ hg -q up -r 0
  $ echo newhead > newhead
  $ hg commit -A -m newhead
  adding newhead
  created new head
  $ hg tag -m 'test head 2 tag' head2

  $ hg log -G -T '{rev}:{node|short} {tags} {desc}\n'
  @  5:2942a772f72a tip test head 2 tag
  |
  o  4:042eb6bfcc49 head2 newhead
  |
  | o  3:c3cb30f2d2cd  test2 tag
  | |
  | o  2:d75775ffbc6b test2 first
  | |
  | o  1:5f97d42da03f  test tag
  |/
  o  0:55482a6fb4b1 test1 initial
  

Trigger tags cache population by doing something that accesses tags info

  $ hg tags
  tip                                5:2942a772f72a
  head2                              4:042eb6bfcc49
  test2                              2:d75775ffbc6b
  test1                              0:55482a6fb4b1

  $ cat .hg/cache/tags2-visible
  5 2942a772f72a444bef4bef13874d515f50fa27b6
  042eb6bfcc4909bad84a1cbf6eb1ddf0ab587d41 head2
  55482a6fb4b1881fa8f746fd52cf6f096bb21c89 test1
  d75775ffbc6bca1794d300f5571272879bd280da test2

Hiding a non-tip changeset should change filtered hash and cause tags recompute

  $ hg debugobsolete -d '0 0' c3cb30f2d2cd0aae008cc91a07876e3c5131fd22 -u dummyuser

  $ hg tags
  tip                                5:2942a772f72a
  head2                              4:042eb6bfcc49
  test1                              0:55482a6fb4b1

  $ cat .hg/cache/tags2-visible
  5 2942a772f72a444bef4bef13874d515f50fa27b6 f34fbc9a9769ba9eff5aff3d008a6b49f85c08b1
  042eb6bfcc4909bad84a1cbf6eb1ddf0ab587d41 head2
  55482a6fb4b1881fa8f746fd52cf6f096bb21c89 test1

  $ hg blackbox -l 4
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> tags (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> 2/2 cache hits/lookups in * seconds (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> writing .hg/cache/tags2-visible with 2 tags (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> tags exited 0 after * seconds (glob)

Hiding another changeset should cause the filtered hash to change

  $ hg debugobsolete -d '0 0' d75775ffbc6bca1794d300f5571272879bd280da -u dummyuser
  $ hg debugobsolete -d '0 0' 5f97d42da03fd56f3b228b03dfe48af5c0adf75b -u dummyuser

  $ hg tags
  tip                                5:2942a772f72a
  head2                              4:042eb6bfcc49

  $ cat .hg/cache/tags2-visible
  5 2942a772f72a444bef4bef13874d515f50fa27b6 2fce1eec33263d08a4d04293960fc73a555230e4
  042eb6bfcc4909bad84a1cbf6eb1ddf0ab587d41 head2

  $ hg blackbox -l 4
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> tags (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> 1/1 cache hits/lookups in * seconds (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> writing .hg/cache/tags2-visible with 1 tags (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> tags exited 0 after * seconds (glob)

Resolving tags on an unfiltered repo writes a separate tags cache

  $ hg --hidden tags
  tip                                5:2942a772f72a
  head2                              4:042eb6bfcc49
  test2                              2:d75775ffbc6b
  test1                              0:55482a6fb4b1

  $ cat .hg/cache/tags2
  5 2942a772f72a444bef4bef13874d515f50fa27b6
  042eb6bfcc4909bad84a1cbf6eb1ddf0ab587d41 head2
  55482a6fb4b1881fa8f746fd52cf6f096bb21c89 test1
  d75775ffbc6bca1794d300f5571272879bd280da test2

  $ hg blackbox -l 4
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> --hidden tags (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> 2/2 cache hits/lookups in * seconds (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> writing .hg/cache/tags2 with 3 tags (glob)
  1970/01/01 00:00:00 bob (*)> --hidden tags exited 0 after * seconds (glob)