Re: [PATCH v4 1/6] revision: add mark_tree_uninteresting_sparse

[Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>]

On 1/11/2019 3:25 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
> So, I assumed that the implementation was wrong, but it is the other
> way around.  You do mean to pick only already uninteresting trees
> out of "set" and mark its reachables.
>
> One thing that would make me worried is what help the callers of
> this function will get (or they may have to devise the way
> themselves) to avoid having to traverse the same tree number of
> times.  A tree can be made uninteresting after a traversal of
> another tree that contains it, but the logic in this function
>
>> +		if (tree->object.flags & UNINTERESTING) {
>> +			/*
>> +			 * Remove the flag so the next call
>> +			 * is not a no-op. The flag is added
>> +			 * in mark_tree_unintersting().
>> +			 */
>> +			tree->object.flags ^= UNINTERESTING;
>> +			mark_tree_uninteresting(r, tree);
>> +		}
> ignores the fact that it is already UNINTERESTING (in fact, in a
> sense it is even worse---it cannot be used to make a not-yet
> UNINTERESTING one into UNINTERESTING), drops the UNINTERESING bit
> and forces the traversal of that tree.  The only thing I see that
> would work as a saving grace is that mark_tree_uninteresting()
> itself would honor existing UNINTERESING bit and refuses to recurse
> into its subtrees, but that means blobs at the top-level of such a
> tree would be marked UNINTERESING while those in its subtrees can be
> left not-UNINTERESING, which sounds like inviting a mess.
>
> It does *not* immediately mean this function is misdesigned.  It
> just means that the caller needs to carefully follow whatever
> calling convention this series will establish in the later patches
> (which we haven't seen yet at this point).
>
I'm sorry that this implementation is particularly confusing. It is 
created only as a placeholder so we can wire up the --sparse option to 
use this method without being "wrong" but is then removed entirely in 
PATCH 4/6:

...

void mark_trees_uninteresting_sparse(struct repository *r,
  				     struct oidset *set)
  {
+	unsigned has_interesting = 0, has_uninteresting = 0;
+	struct hashmap map;
+	struct hashmap_iter map_iter;
+	struct path_and_oids_entry *entry;
  	struct object_id *oid;
  	struct oidset_iter iter;
  
  	oidset_iter_init(set, &iter);
-	while ((oid = oidset_iter_next(&iter))) {
+	while ((!has_interesting || !has_uninteresting) &&
+	       (oid = oidset_iter_next(&iter))) {
  		struct tree *tree = lookup_tree(r, oid);
  
  		if (!tree)
  			continue;
  
-		if (tree->object.flags & UNINTERESTING) {
-			/*
-			 * Remove the flag so the next call
-			 * is not a no-op. The flag is added
-			 * in mark_tree_unintersting().
-			 */
-			tree->object.flags ^= UNINTERESTING;
-			mark_tree_uninteresting(r, tree);
-		}
+		if (tree->object.flags & UNINTERESTING)
+			has_uninteresting = 1;
+		else
+			has_interesting = 1;
+	}
...

You are definitely correct that "set" is not a valuable variable name. It could instead be "tree_oids" to be slightly more informative.

Thanks,
-Stolee