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From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Git Mailing List <git@vger.kernel.org>,
	Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>,
	bmwill@google.com, jonathantanmy@google.com,
	David Lang <david@lang.hm>,
	"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Subject: Re: RFC v3: Another proposed hash function transition plan
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2017 23:34:03 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20170908033403.q7e6dj7benasrjes@sigill.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1snh29re.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 11:40:21AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Our "git fsck" already treats certain brokenness (like a tree whose
> entry has mode that is 0-padded to the left) as broken but still
> tolerate them.  I am not sure if it is sufficient to diagnose and
> declare broken and invalid when we see sha3-content that records
> these "mechanically derivable but expensive to compute" pieces of
> information incorrectly.
> 
> I am leaning towards saying "yes, catching in fsck is enough" and
> suggesting to add generation number to sha3-content of the commit
> objects, and to add even the "original sha1 name" thing if we find
> good use of it.  But I cannot shake this nagging feeling off that I
> am missing some huge problems that adding these fields and opening
> ourselves to more classes of broken objects.

I share your nagging feeling.

I have two thoughts on the "fsck can catch it" line of reasoning.

  1. It's harder to fsck generation numbers than other syntactic
     elements of an object, because it inherently depends on the links.
     So I can't fsck a commit object in isolation. I have to open its
     parents and check _their_ generation numbers.

     In some sense that isn't a big deal. A real fsck wants to know that
     we _have_ the parents in the first place. But traditionally we've
     separated "is this syntactically valid" from "do we have full
     connectivity". And features like shallow clones rely on us fudging
     the latter but not the former. A shallow history could never
     properly fsck the generation numbers.

     A multiple-hash field doesn't have this problem. It's purely a
     function of the bytes in the object.

  2. I wouldn't classify the current fsck checks as a wild success in
     containing breakages. If a buggy implementation produces invalid
     objects, the same buggy implementation generally lets people (and
     their colleagues) unwittingly build on top of those objects. It's
     only later (sometimes much later) that they interact with a
     non-buggy implementation whose fsck complains.

     And what happens then? If they're lucky, the invalid objects
     haven't spread far, and the worst thing is that they have to learn
     to use filter-branch (which itself is punishment enough). But
     sometimes a significant bit of history has been built on top, and
     it's awkward or impossible to rewrite it.

     That puts the burden on whoever is running the non-buggy
     implementation that wants to reject the objects. Do they accept
     these broken objects? If so, what do they do to mitigate the wrong
     answers that Git will return?

I'm much more in favor of keeping that data outside the object-hash
computation, and caching the pre-computed results as necessary. Those
cache can disagree with the objects, of course, but the cost to dropping
and re-building them is much lower than a history rewrite.

I'm speaking primarily to the generation-number thing, where I really
don't think there's any benefit to embedding it in the object beyond the
obvious "well, it has to go _somewhere_, and this saves us implementing
a local cache layer".  I haven't thought hard enough on the
multiple-hash thing to know if there's some other benefit to having it
inside the objects.

-Peff

  reply	other threads:[~2017-09-08  3:34 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 113+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2017-03-04  1:12 RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-05  2:35 ` Linus Torvalds
2017-03-06  0:26   ` brian m. carlson
2017-03-06 18:24     ` Brandon Williams
2017-06-15 10:30       ` Which hash function to use, was " Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-15 11:05         ` Mike Hommey
2017-06-15 13:01           ` Jeff King
2017-06-15 16:30             ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-15 19:34               ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-15 21:59                 ` Adam Langley
2017-06-15 22:41                   ` brian m. carlson
2017-06-15 23:36                     ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-16  0:17                       ` brian m. carlson
2017-06-16  6:25                         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-16 13:24                           ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-16 17:38                             ` Adam Langley
2017-06-16 20:52                               ` Junio C Hamano
2017-06-16 21:12                                 ` Junio C Hamano
2017-06-16 21:24                                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-06-16 21:39                                     ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-16 20:42                             ` Jeff King
2017-06-19  9:26                               ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-15 21:10             ` Mike Hommey
2017-06-16  4:30               ` Jeff King
2017-06-15 17:36         ` Brandon Williams
2017-06-15 19:20           ` Junio C Hamano
2017-06-15 19:13         ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-07  0:17   ` RFC v3: " Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-09 19:14     ` Shawn Pearce
2017-03-09 20:24       ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-10 19:38         ` Jeff King
2017-03-10 19:55           ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-28  4:43       ` [PATCH v4] technical doc: add a design doc for hash function transition Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-29  6:06         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-29  8:09           ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-29 17:34           ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-10-02  8:25             ` Junio C Hamano
2017-10-02 19:41             ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-02  9:02         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-10-02 19:23         ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-03  5:40         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-10-03 13:08           ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-04  1:44         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-06  6:28     ` RFC v3: Another proposed hash function transition plan Junio C Hamano
2017-09-08  2:40       ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-08  3:34         ` Jeff King [this message]
2017-09-11 18:59         ` Brandon Williams
2017-09-13 12:05           ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-13 13:43             ` demerphq
2017-09-13 22:51               ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14 18:26                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-14 18:40                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14 22:09                     ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-13 23:30               ` Linus Torvalds
2017-09-14 18:45                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-18 12:17                   ` Gilles Van Assche
2017-09-18 22:16                     ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-19 16:45                       ` Gilles Van Assche
2017-09-29 13:17                         ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-29 14:54                           ` Joan Daemen
2017-09-29 22:33                             ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-30 22:02                               ` Joan Daemen
2017-10-02 14:26                                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-18 22:25                     ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-26 17:05                   ` Jason Cooper
2017-09-26 22:11                     ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-26 22:25                       ` [PATCH] technical doc: add a design doc for hash function transition Stefan Beller
2017-09-26 23:38                         ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-26 23:51                       ` RFC v3: Another proposed hash function transition plan Jonathan Nieder
2017-10-02 14:54                         ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-02 16:50                           ` Brandon Williams
2017-10-02 14:00                       ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-02 17:18                         ` Linus Torvalds
2017-10-02 19:37                           ` Jeff King
2017-09-13 16:30             ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-13 21:52               ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-13 22:07                 ` Stefan Beller
2017-09-13 22:18                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14  2:13                     ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-14 15:23                       ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-14 15:45                         ` demerphq
2017-09-14 22:06                           ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-13 22:15                 ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-13 22:27                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14  2:10                     ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-14 12:39               ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-14 16:36                 ` Brandon Williams
2017-09-14 18:49                 ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-15 20:42                   ` Philip Oakley
2017-03-05 11:02 ` RFC: " David Lang
     [not found]   ` <CA+dhYEXHbQfJ6KUB1tWS9u1MLEOJL81fTYkbxu4XO-i+379LPw@mail.gmail.com>
2017-03-06  9:43     ` Jeff King
2017-03-06 23:40   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-07  0:03     ` Mike Hommey
2017-03-06  8:43 ` Jeff King
2017-03-06 18:39   ` Jonathan Tan
2017-03-06 19:22     ` Linus Torvalds
2017-03-06 19:59       ` Brandon Williams
2017-03-06 21:53       ` Junio C Hamano
2017-03-07  8:59     ` Jeff King
2017-03-06 18:43   ` Junio C Hamano
2017-03-07 18:57 ` Ian Jackson
2017-03-07 19:15   ` Linus Torvalds
2017-03-08 11:20     ` Ian Jackson
2017-03-08 15:37       ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-03-08 15:40       ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-03-20  5:21         ` Use base32? Jason Hennessey
2017-03-20  5:58           ` Michael Steuer
2017-03-20  8:05             ` Jacob Keller
2017-03-21  3:07               ` Michael Steuer
2017-03-13  9:24 ` RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan The Keccak Team
2017-03-13 17:48   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-13 18:34     ` ankostis
2017-03-17 11:07       ` Johannes Schindelin

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