The classic diff adds only the lines that it's going to consider,
during the diff, to an array. A mapping between the compacted
array, and the lines of the file that they reference, is
facilitated by this array.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
size_t is used because nreff describes the number of elements in memory
for rindex.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
size_t is used because nrec describes the number of elements for both
recs, and for 'changed' + 2.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The ha field is serving two different purposes, which makes the code
harder to read. At first glance, it looks like many places assume
there could never be hash collisions between lines of the two input
files. In reality, line_hash is used together with xdl_recmatch() to
ensure correct comparisons of lines, even when collisions occur.
To make this clearer, the old ha field has been split:
* line_hash: a straightforward hash of a line, independent of any
external context. Its type is uint64_t, as it comes from a fixed
width hash function.
* minimal_perfect_hash: Not a new concept, but now a separate
field. It comes from the classifier's general-purpose hash table,
which assigns each line a unique and minimal hash across the two
files. A size_t is used here because it's meant to be used to
index an array. This also avoids ` as usize` casts on the Rust
side when using it to index a slice.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Convert the function signature and body to use unambiguous types. char
is changed to uint8_t because this function processes bytes in memory.
unsigned long to uint64_t so that the hash output is consistent across
platforms. `flags` was changed from long to uint64_t to ensure the
high order bits are not dropped on platforms that treat long as 32
bits.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
size_t is the appropriate type because size is describing the number of
elements, bytes in this case, in memory.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Make xrecord_t.ptr uint8_t because it's referring to bytes in memory.
In order to avoid a refactor avalanche, many uses of this field were
cast to char* or similar.
Places where casting was unnecessary:
xemit.c:156
xmerge.c:124
xmerge.c:127
xmerge.c:164
xmerge.c:169
xmerge.c:172
xmerge.c:178
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The only values possible for 'changed' is 1 and 0, which exactly maps
to a bool type. It might not look like this because action1 and action2
(which use to be dis1, and dis2) were also of type char and were
assigned numerical values within a few lines of 'changed' (what used to
be rchg).
Using DISCARD/KEEP/INVESTIGATE for action1[i]/action2[j], and true/false
for changed[k] makes it clear to future readers that these are
logically separate concepts.
Best-viewed-with: --color-words
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is refactor-only; no behavior is changed. A future commit
will use bool literals for changed[i].
The functions xdl_clean_mmatch() and xdl_cleanup_records() will be
cleaned up more in a future patch series. The changes to
xdl_cleanup_records(), in this patch, are just to make it clear why
`char rchg` is refactored to `bool changed`.
Rename dis* to action* and replace literal numericals with macros.
The old names came from when dis* (which I think was short for discard)
was treated like a boolean, but over time it grew into a ternary state
machine. The result was confusing because dis* and rchg* both used 0/1
values with different meanings.
The new names and macros make the states explicit. nm is short for
number of matches, and mlim is a heuristic limit:
nm == 0 -> action[i] = DISCARD -> changed[i] = true
0 < nm < mlim -> action[i] = KEEP -> changed[i] = false
nm >= mlim -> action[i] = INVESTIGATE -> changed[i] = xdl_clean_mmatch()
When need_min is true, only DISCARD and KEEP occur because the limit
is effectively infinite.
Best-viewed-with: --color-words
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The field rchg (now 'changed') declares if a line in a file is changed
or not. A later commit will change it's type from 'char' to 'bool'
to make its purpose even more clear.
Best-viewed-with: --color-words
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
xdfile_t currently uses chastore_t which is an arena allocator. I
think that xrecord_t used to be a linked list and recs didn't exist
originally. When recs was added I think they forgot to remove
xdfile_t.next, but was overlooked. This dual data structure setup
makes the code somewhat confusing.
Additionally the C type chastore_t isn't FFI friendly, and provides
little to no performance benefit over using realloc to grow an array.
Performance impact of deleting fields from xdfile_t:
Deleting ha is about 5% slower.
Deleting cha is about 5% faster.
Delete ha, but keep cha
time hyperfine --warmup 3 -L exe build_v2.51.0/git,build_delete_ha/git '{exe} log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null'
Benchmark 1: build_v2.51.0/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 1.269 s ± 0.017 s [User: 1.135 s, System: 0.128 s]
Range (min … max): 1.249 s … 1.286 s 10 runs
Benchmark 2: build_delete_ha/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 1.339 s ± 0.017 s [User: 1.234 s, System: 0.099 s]
Range (min … max): 1.320 s … 1.358 s 10 runs
Summary
build_v2.51.0/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null ran
1.06 ± 0.02 times faster than build_delete_ha/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Delete cha, but keep ha
time hyperfine --warmup 3 -L exe build_v2.51.0/git,build_delete_chastore/git '{exe} log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null'
Benchmark 1: build_v2.51.0/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 1.290 s ± 0.001 s [User: 1.154 s, System: 0.130 s]
Range (min … max): 1.288 s … 1.292 s 10 runs
Benchmark 2: build_delete_chastore/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 1.232 s ± 0.017 s [User: 1.105 s, System: 0.121 s]
Range (min … max): 1.205 s … 1.249 s 10 runs
Summary
build_delete_chastore/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null ran
1.05 ± 0.01 times faster than build_v2.51.0/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Delete ha AND chastore
time hyperfine --warmup 3 -L exe build_v2.51.0/git,build_delete_ha_and_chastore/git '{exe} log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null'
Benchmark 1: build_v2.51.0/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 1.291 s ± 0.002 s [User: 1.156 s, System: 0.129 s]
Range (min … max): 1.287 s … 1.295 s 10 runs
Benchmark 2: build_delete_ha_and_chastore/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Time (mean ± σ): 1.306 s ± 0.001 s [User: 1.195 s, System: 0.105 s]
Range (min … max): 1.305 s … 1.308 s 10 runs
Summary
build_v2.51.0/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null ran
1.01 ± 0.00 times faster than build_delete_ha_and_chastore/git log --oneline --shortstat --diff-algorithm=myers -3000 v2.39.1 >/dev/null
Best-viewed-with: --color-words
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The fields from xdlclass_t are aliases of xrecord_t:
xdlclass_t.line -> xrecord_t.ptr
xdlclass_t.size -> xrecord_t.size
xdlclass_t.ha -> xrecord_t.ha
xdlclass_t carries a copy of the data in xrecord_t, but instead of
embedding xrecord_t it duplicates the individual fields. A future
commit will change the types used in xrecord_t so embed it in
xdlclass_t first, so we don't have to remember to change the types
here as well.
Best-viewed-with: --color-words
Helped-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
When 0 <= i < xdfile_t.nreff the following is true:
xdfile_t.ha[i] == xdfile_t.recs[xdfile_t.rindex[i]]
This makes the code about 5% slower. The fields rindex and ha are
specific to the classic diff (myers and minimal). I plan on creating a
struct for classic diff, but there's a lot of cleanup that needs to be
done before that can happen and leaving ha in would make those cleanups
harder to follow.
A subsequent commit will delete the chastore cha from xdfile_t. That
later commit will investigate deleting ha and cha independently and
together.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
xrecord_t.next, xdfile_t.hbits, xdfile_t.rhash are initialized,
but never used for anything by the code. Remove them.
Best-viewed-with: --color-words
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
These local variables are essentially a hand-rolled additional
implementation of xdl_free_ctx() inlined into xdl_prepare_ctx(). Modify
the code to use the existing xdl_free_ctx() function so there aren't
two ways to free such variables.
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Move xdl_prepare_env() later in the file to avoid the need
for static forward declarations.
Best-viewed-with: --color-moved
Signed-off-by: Ezekiel Newren <ezekielnewren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The cleanup_records function marks some lines as changed before running
the actual diff algorithm. For most lines, this is a good performance
optimization, but it also marks lines that are surrounded by many
changed lines as changed as well. This can cause redundant changes and
longer-than-necessary diffs.
Whether this results in better-looking diffs is subjective. However, the
--minimal flag explicitly requests the shortest possible diff.
The change results in shorter diffs in about 1.3% of all diffs in Git's
history. Performance wise, I have measured the impact on
"git log -p -3000 --minimal > /dev/null". With this change, I get
Time (mean ± σ): 2.363 s ± 0.023 s (25 runs)
and without this patch I measured
Time (mean ± σ): 2.362 s ± 0.035 s (25 runs).
As the difference is well within the margin of error, this does not seem
to have an impact on performance.
Signed-off-by: Niels Glodny <n.glodny@campus.lmu.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add a helper to grow an array. This is analogous to ALLOC_GROW() in
the rest of the codebase but returns −1 on allocation failure to
accommodate other users of libxdiff such as libgit2. It will also
return a error if the multiplication overflows while calculating the
new allocation size. Note that this keeps doubling on reallocation
like the code it is replacing rather than increasing the existing size
by half like ALLOC_GROW(). It does however copy ALLOC_GROW()'s trick
of adding a small amount to the new allocation to avoid a lot of
reallocations at small sizes.
Note that xdl_alloc_grow_helper() uses long rather than size_t for
`nr` and `alloc` to match the existing code.
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add a helper for allocating an array and initialize the elements to
zero. This is analogous to CALLOC_ARRAY() in the rest of the codebase
but it returns NULL on allocation failures rather than dying to
accommodate other users of libxdiff such as libgit2.
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In preparation for introducing XDL_CALLOC_ARRAY() use calloc() to
obtain zeroed out memory rather than malloc() followed by memset(). To
try and keep the lines a reasonable length this commit also stops
casting the pointer returned by calloc() as this is unnecessary.
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add a helper to allocate an array that automatically calculates the
allocation size. This is analogous to ALLOC_ARRAY() in the rest of the
codebase but returns NULL if the allocation fails to accommodate other
users of libxdiff such as libgit2. The helper will also return NULL if
the multiplication in the allocation calculation overflows.
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
rindex and ha are only used by xdl_cleanup_records() which is not
called by the histogram or patience algorithms. The perf test results
show a small reduction in run time but that is probably within the
noise.
Test HEAD^ HEAD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4000.1: log -3000 (baseline) 0.19(0.17+0.02) 0.19(0.12+0.07) +0.0%
4000.2: log --raw -3000 (tree-only) 0.98(0.78+0.20) 0.98(0.81+0.16) +0.0%
4000.3: log -p -3000 (Myers) 4.81(4.15+0.64) 4.81(4.23+0.56) +0.0%
4000.4: log -p -3000 --histogram 5.87(5.19+0.66) 5.83(5.11+0.70) -0.7%
4000.5: log -p -3000 --patience 5.35(4.60+0.73) 5.31(4.61+0.69) -0.7%
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Histogram is the only diff algorithm not to call
xdl_classify_record(). xdl_classify_record() ensures that the hash
values of two strings that are not equal differ which means that it is
not necessary to use xdl_recmatch() when comparing lines, all that is
necessary is to compare the hash values. This gives a 7% reduction in
the runtime of "git log --patch" when using the histogram diff
algorithm.
Test HEAD^ HEAD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4000.1: log -3000 (baseline) 0.18(0.14+0.04) 0.19(0.17+0.02) +5.6%
4000.2: log --raw -3000 (tree-only) 0.99(0.77+0.21) 0.98(0.78+0.20) -1.0%
4000.3: log -p -3000 (Myers) 4.84(4.31+0.51) 4.81(4.15+0.64) -0.6%
4000.4: log -p -3000 --histogram 6.34(5.86+0.46) 5.87(5.19+0.66) -7.4%
4000.5: log -p -3000 --patience 5.39(4.60+0.76) 5.35(4.60+0.73) -0.7%
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The mailing address for the FSF has changed over the years. Rather than
updating the address across all files, refer readers to gnu.org, as the
GNU GPL documentation now suggests for license notices. The mailing
address is retained in the full license files (COPYING and LGPL-2.1).
The old address is still present in t/diff-lib/COPYING. This is
intentional, as the file is used in tests and the contents are not
expected to change.
Signed-off-by: Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The xdl_prepare_env() function may initialise an xdlclassifier_t
data structure via xdl_init_classifier(), which allocates memory
to several fields, for example 'rchash', 'rcrecs' and 'ncha'.
If this function later exits due to the failure of xdl_optimize_ctxs(),
then this xdlclassifier_t structure, and the memory allocated to it,
is not cleaned up.
In order to fix the memory leak, insert a call to xdl_free_classifier()
before returning.
Signed-off-by: Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Commit 307ab20b3 ("xdiff: PATIENCE/HISTOGRAM are not independent option
bits", 19-02-2012) introduced the XDF_DIFF_ALG() macro to access the
flag bits used to represent the diff algorithm requested. In addition,
code which had used explicit manipulation of the flag bits was changed
to use the macros.
However, one example of direct manipulation remains. Update this code to
use the XDF_DIFF_ALG() macro.
Signed-off-by: Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Because the default Myers, patience and histogram algorithms cannot be in
effect at the same time, XDL_PATIENCE_DIFF and XDL_HISTOGRAM_DIFF are not
independent bits. Instead of wasting one bit per algorithm, define a few
macros to access the few bits they occupy and update the code that access
them.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
27af01d (xdiff/xprepare: improve O(n*m) performance in
xdl_cleanup_records(), 2011-08-17) was supposed to be a performance
boost only. However, it unexpectedly changed the behaviour of diff.
Revert a part of 27af01d that removes logic that mark lines as
"multi-match" (ie. dis[i] == 2). This was preventing the multi-match
discard heuristic (performed in xdl_cleanup_records() and
xdl_clean_mmatch()) from executing.
Reported-by: Alexander Pepper <pepper@inf.fu-berlin.de>
Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Ensure that the xdl_free_classifier() call on xdlclassifier_t cf is safe
even if xdl_init_classifier() isn't called. This may occur in the case
where diff is run with --histogram and a call to, say, xdl_prepare_ctx()
fails.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
* rc/histogram-diff:
xdiff/xhistogram: drop need for additional variable
xdiff/xhistogram: rely on xdl_trim_ends()
xdiff/xhistogram: rework handling of recursed results
xdiff: do away with xdl_mmfile_next()
Make test number unique
xdiff/xprepare: use a smaller sample size for histogram diff
xdiff/xprepare: skip classification
teach --histogram to diff
t4033-diff-patience: factor out tests
xdiff/xpatience: factor out fall-back-diff function
xdiff/xprepare: refactor abort cleanups
xdiff/xprepare: use memset()
Conflicts:
xdiff/xprepare.c
In xdl_cleanup_records(), we see O(n*m) performance, where n is the
number of records from xdf->dstart to xdf->dend, and m is the size of a
bucket in xdf->rhash (<= by mlim).
Here, we improve this to O(n) by pre-computing nm (in rcrec->len(1|2))
in xdl_classify_record().
Reported-by: Marat Radchenko <marat@slonopotamus.org>
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Given our simple mmfile structure, xdl_mmfile_next() calls are
redundant. Do away with calls to them.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
For histogram diff, we can afford a smaller sample size and thus a
poorer estimate of the number of lines, as the hash table (rhash) won't
be filled up/grown. This is safe as the final count of lines (xdf.nrecs)
will be updated correctly anyway by xdl_prepare_ctx().
This gives us a small boost in performance.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
xdiff performs "classification" of records (xdl_classify_record()),
replacing hashes (xrecord_t.ha) with a unique identifier of the
record/line and building a hash table (xrecord_t.rhash) of records. This
is then used to "cleanup" records (xdl_cleanup_records()).
We don't need any of that in histogram diff, so we omit calls to these
functions. We also skip allocating memory to the hash table, rhash, as
it is no longer used.
This gives us a small boost in performance.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Group free()'s that are called when a malloc() fails in
xdl_prepare_ctx(), making for more readable code.
Also add a free() on ha, in case future git hackers add allocs after the
ha malloc.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Use memset() instead of a for loop to initialize. This could give a
performance advantage.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The patience diff algorithm produces slightly more intuitive output
than the classic Myers algorithm, as it does not try to minimize the
number of +/- lines first, but tries to preserve the lines that are
unique.
To this end, it first determines lines that are unique in both files,
then the maximal sequence which preserves the order (relative to both
files) is extracted.
Starting from this initial set of common lines, the rest of the lines
is handled recursively, with Myers' algorithm as a fallback when
the patience algorithm fails (due to no common unique lines).
This patch includes memory leak fixes by Pierre Habouzit.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In a corner case of large files whose lines do not match uniquely, the
loop to eliminate a line that matches multiple locations adjacent to a run
of lines that do not uniquely match wasted too much cycles. Fix this by
giving up early after scanning 100 lines in both direction.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This uses "git-apply --whitespace=strip" to fix whitespace errors that have
crept in to our source files over time. There are a few files that need
to have trailing whitespaces (most notably, test vectors). The results
still passes the test, and build result in Documentation/ area is unchanged.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This adds -b (--ignore-space-change) and -w (--ignore-all-space) flags to
diff. The main part of the patch is teaching libxdiff about it.
[jc: renamed xdl_line_match() to xdl_recmatch() since the former is used
for different purposes in xpatchi.c which is in the parts of the upstream
source we do not use.]
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
This uses a simplified libxdiff setup to generate unified diffs _without_
doing fork/execve of GNU "diff".
This has several huge advantages, for example:
Before:
[torvalds@g5 linux]$ time git diff v2.6.16.. > /dev/null
real 0m24.818s
user 0m13.332s
sys 0m8.664s
After:
[torvalds@g5 linux]$ time git diff v2.6.16.. > /dev/null
real 0m4.563s
user 0m2.944s
sys 0m1.580s
and the fact that this should be a lot more portable (ie we can ignore all
the issues with doing fork/execve under Windows).
Perhaps even more importantly, this allows us to do diffs without actually
ever writing out the git file contents to a temporary file (and without
any of the shell quoting issues on filenames etc etc).
NOTE! THIS PATCH DOES NOT DO THAT OPTIMIZATION YET! I was lazy, and the
current "diff-core" code actually will always write the temp-files,
because it used to be something that you simply had to do. So this current
one actually writes a temp-file like before, and then reads it into memory
again just to do the diff. Stupid.
But if this basic infrastructure is accepted, we can start switching over
diff-core to not write temp-files, which should speed things up even
further, especially when doing big tree-to-tree diffs.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should also point out a few
downsides:
- the libxdiff algorithm is different, and I bet GNU diff has gotten a
lot more testing. And the thing is, generating a diff is not an exact
science - you can get two different diffs (and you will), and they can
both be perfectly valid. So it's not possible to "validate" the
libxdiff output by just comparing it against GNU diff.
- GNU diff does some nice eye-candy, like trying to figure out what the
last function was, and adding that information to the "@@ .." line.
libxdiff doesn't do that.
- The libxdiff thing has some known deficiencies. In particular, it gets
the "\No newline at end of file" case wrong. So this is currently for
the experimental branch only. I hope Davide will help fix it.
That said, I think the huge performance advantage, and the fact that it
integrates better is definitely worth it. But it should go into a
development branch at least due to the missing newline issue.
Technical note: this is based on libxdiff-0.17, but I did some surgery to
get rid of the extraneous fat - stuff that git doesn't need, and seriously
cutting down on mmfile_t, which had much more capabilities than the diff
algorithm either needed or used. In this version, "mmfile_t" is just a
trivial <pointer,length> tuple.
That said, I tried to keep the differences to simple removals, so that you
can do a diff between this and the libxdiff origin, and you'll basically
see just things getting deleted. Even the mmfile_t simplifications are
left in a state where the diffs should be readable.
Apologies to Davide, whom I'd love to get feedback on this all from (I
wrote my own "fill_mmfile()" for the new simpler mmfile_t format: the old
complex format had a helper function for that, but I did my surgery with
the goal in mind that eventually we _should_ just do
mmfile_t mf;
buf = read_sha1_file(sha1, type, &size);
mf->ptr = buf;
mf->size = size;
.. use "mf" directly ..
which was really a nightmare with the old "helpful" mmfile_t, and really
is that easy with the new cut-down interfaces).
[ Btw, as any hawk-eye can see from the diff, this was actually generated
with itself, so it is "self-hosting". That's about all the testing it
has gotten, along with the above kernel diff, which eye-balls correctly,
but shows the newline issue when you double-check it with "git-apply" ]
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
