reftable/stack: use stat info to avoid re-reading stack list

Whenever we call into the refs interfaces we potentially have to reload
refs in case they have been concurrently modified, either in-process or
externally. While this happens somewhat automatically for loose refs
because we simply try to re-read the files, the "packed" backend will
reload its snapshot of the packed-refs file in case its stat info has
changed since last reading it.

In the reftable backend we have a similar mechanism that is provided by
`reftable_stack_reload()`. This function will read the list of stacks
from "tables.list" and, if they have changed from the currently stored
list, reload the stacks. This is heavily inefficient though, as we have
to check whether the stack is up-to-date on basically every read and
thus keep on re-reading the file all the time even if it didn't change
at all.

We can do better and use the same stat(3P)-based mechanism that the
"packed" backend uses. Instead of reading the file, we will only open
the file descriptor, fstat(3P) it, and then compare the info against the
cached value from the last time we have updated the stack. This should
always work alright because "tables.list" is updated atomically via a
rename, so even if the ctime or mtime wasn't granular enough to identify
a change, at least the inode number or file size should have changed.

This change significantly speeds up operations where many refs are read,
like when using git-update-ref(1). The following benchmark creates N
refs in an otherwise-empty repository via `git update-ref --stdin`:

  Benchmark 1: update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 1, revision = HEAD~)
    Time (mean ± σ):       5.1 ms ±   0.2 ms    [User: 2.4 ms, System: 2.6 ms]
    Range (min … max):     4.8 ms …   7.2 ms    109 runs

  Benchmark 2: update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 100, revision = HEAD~)
    Time (mean ± σ):      19.1 ms ±   0.9 ms    [User: 8.9 ms, System: 9.9 ms]
    Range (min … max):    18.4 ms …  26.7 ms    72 runs

  Benchmark 3: update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 10000, revision = HEAD~)
    Time (mean ± σ):      1.336 s ±  0.018 s    [User: 0.590 s, System: 0.724 s]
    Range (min … max):    1.314 s …  1.373 s    10 runs

  Benchmark 4: update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 1, revision = HEAD)
    Time (mean ± σ):       5.1 ms ±   0.2 ms    [User: 2.4 ms, System: 2.6 ms]
    Range (min … max):     4.8 ms …   7.2 ms    109 runs

  Benchmark 5: update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 100, revision = HEAD)
    Time (mean ± σ):      14.8 ms ±   0.2 ms    [User: 7.1 ms, System: 7.5 ms]
    Range (min … max):    14.2 ms …  15.2 ms    82 runs

  Benchmark 6: update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 10000, revision = HEAD)
    Time (mean ± σ):     927.6 ms ±   5.3 ms    [User: 437.8 ms, System: 489.5 ms]
    Range (min … max):   919.4 ms … 936.4 ms    10 runs

  Summary
    update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 1, revision = HEAD) ran
      1.00 ± 0.07 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 1, revision = HEAD~)
      2.89 ± 0.14 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 100, revision = HEAD)
      3.74 ± 0.25 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 100, revision = HEAD~)
    181.26 ± 8.30 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 10000, revision = HEAD)
    261.01 ± 12.35 times faster than update-ref: create many refs (refcount = 10000, revision = HEAD~)

Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/reftable/stack.h b/reftable/stack.h
index f57005846e..3f80cc598a 100644
--- a/reftable/stack.h
+++ b/reftable/stack.h
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ https://developers.google.com/open-source/licenses/bsd
 #include "reftable-stack.h"
 
 struct reftable_stack {
+	struct stat_validity list_validity;
 	char *list_file;
 	char *reftable_dir;
 	int disable_auto_compact;