backfill: add --sparse option

One way to significantly reduce the cost of a Git clone and later fetches is
to use a blobless partial clone and combine that with a sparse-checkout that
reduces the paths that need to be populated in the working directory. Not
only does this reduce the cost of clones and fetches, the sparse-checkout
reduces the number of objects needed to download from a promisor remote.

However, history investigations can be expensive as computing blob diffs
will trigger promisor remote requests for one object at a time. This can be
avoided by downloading the blobs needed for the given sparse-checkout using
'git backfill' and its new '--sparse' mode, at a time that the user is
willing to pay that extra cost.

Note that this is distinctly different from the '--filter=sparse:<oid>'
option, as this assumes that the partial clone has all reachable trees and
we are using client-side logic to avoid downloading blobs outside of the
sparse-checkout cone. This avoids the server-side cost of walking trees
while also achieving a similar goal. It also downloads in batches based on
similar path names, presenting a resumable download if things are
interrupted.

This augments the path-walk API to have a possibly-NULL 'pl' member that may
point to a 'struct pattern_list'. This could be more general than the
sparse-checkout definition at HEAD, but 'git backfill --sparse' is currently
the only consumer.

Be sure to test this in both cone mode and not cone mode. Cone mode has the
benefit that the path-walk can skip certain paths once they would expand
beyond the sparse-checkout. Non-cone mode can describe the included files
using both positive and negative patterns, which changes the possible return
values of path_matches_pattern_list(). Test both kinds of matches for
increased coverage.

To test this, we can create a blobless sparse clone, expand the
sparse-checkout slightly, and then run 'git backfill --sparse' to see
how much data is downloaded. The general steps are

 1. git clone --filter=blob:none --sparse <url>
 2. git sparse-checkout set <dir1> ... <dirN>
 3. git backfill --sparse

For the Git repository with the 'builtin' directory in the
sparse-checkout, we get these results for various batch sizes:

| Batch Size      | Pack Count | Pack Size | Time  |
|-----------------|------------|-----------|-------|
| (Initial clone) | 3          | 110 MB    |       |
| 10K             | 12         | 192 MB    | 17.2s |
| 15K             | 9          | 192 MB    | 15.5s |
| 20K             | 8          | 192 MB    | 15.5s |
| 25K             | 7          | 192 MB    | 14.7s |

This case matters less because a full clone of the Git repository from
GitHub is currently at 277 MB.

Using a copy of the Linux repository with the 'kernel/' directory in the
sparse-checkout, we get these results:

| Batch Size      | Pack Count | Pack Size | Time |
|-----------------|------------|-----------|------|
| (Initial clone) | 2          | 1,876 MB  |      |
| 10K             | 11         | 2,187 MB  | 46s  |
| 25K             | 7          | 2,188 MB  | 43s  |
| 50K             | 5          | 2,194 MB  | 44s  |
| 100K            | 4          | 2,194 MB  | 48s  |

This case is more meaningful because a full clone of the Linux
repository is currently over 6 GB, so this is a valuable way to download
a fraction of the repository and no longer need network access for all
reachable objects within the sparse-checkout.

Choosing a batch size will depend on a lot of factors, including the
user's network speed or reliability, the repository's file structure,
and how many versions there are of the file within the sparse-checkout
scope. There will not be a one-size-fits-all solution.

Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/path-walk.h b/path-walk.h
index 414d6db23c..473ee9d361 100644
--- a/path-walk.h
+++ b/path-walk.h
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 
 struct rev_info;
 struct oid_array;
+struct pattern_list;
 
 /**
  * The type of a function pointer for the method that is called on a list of
@@ -48,6 +49,16 @@ struct path_walk_info {
 	 * walk the children of such trees.
 	 */
 	int prune_all_uninteresting;
+
+	/**
+	 * Specify a sparse-checkout definition to match our paths to. Do not
+	 * walk outside of this sparse definition. If the patterns are in
+	 * cone mode, then the search may prune directories that are outside
+	 * of the cone. If not in cone mode, then all tree paths will be
+	 * explored but the path_fn will only be called when the path matches
+	 * the sparse-checkout patterns.
+	 */
+	struct pattern_list *pl;
 };
 
 #define PATH_WALK_INFO_INIT {   \