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Taylor Blau [Wed, 19 Mar 2025 22:52:54 +0000 (18:52 -0400)]

repack: avoid combining cruft packs with `--max-cruft-size`

In 37dc6d8104 (builtin/repack.c: implement support for
`--max-cruft-size`, 2023-10-02), we exposed new functionality that
allowed repositories to specify the behavior of when we should combine
multiple cruft packs together.

This feature was designed to ensure that we never repacked cruft packs
which were larger than the given threshold in order to provide tighter
I/O bounds for repositories that have many unreachable objects. In
essence, specifying '--max-cruft-size=N' instructed 'repack' to
aggregate cruft packs together (in order of ascending size) until the
combine size grows past 'N', and then make a new cruft pack whose
contents includes the packs we rolled up.

But this isn't quite how it works in practice. Suppose for example that
we have two cruft packs which are each 100MiB in size. One might expect
specifying "--max-cruft-size=200M" would combine these two packs
together, and then avoid repacking them until a pruning GC takes place.
In reality, 'repack' would try and aggregate these together, but writing
a pack that is strictly smaller than 200 MiB (since pack-objects'
"--max-pack-size" provides a strict bound for packs containing more than
one object).

So instead we'll write out a pack that is, say, 199 MiB in size, and
then another 1 MiB pack containing the balance. If we later repack the
repository without adding any new unreachable objects, we'll repeat the
same exercise again, making the same 199 MiB and 1 MiB packs each time.

This happens because of a poor choice to bolt the '--max-cruft-size'
functionality onto pack-objects' '--max-pack-size', forcing us to
generate packs which are always smaller than the provided threshold and
thus subject to repacking.

The following commit will introduce a new flag that implements something
similar to the behavior above. Let's prepare for that by making repack's
'--max-cruft-size' flag behave as an cruft pack-specific override for
'--max-pack-size'.

Do so by temporarily repurposing the 'collapse_small_cruft_packs()'
function to instead generate a cruft pack using the same instructions as
if we didn't specify any maximum pack size. The calling code looks
something like:

    if (args->max_pack_size && !cruft_expiration) {
        collapse_small_cruft_packs(in, args->max_pack_size, existing);
    } else {
        for_each_string_list_item(item, &existing->non_kept_packs)
            fprintf(in, "-%s.pack\n", item->string);
        for_each_string_list_item(item, &existing->cruft_packs)
            fprintf(in, "-%s.pack\n", item->string);
    }

This patch makes collapse_small_cruft_packs() behave identically to the
'else' arm of the conditional above. This repurposing of
'collapse_small_cruft_packs()' is intentional, since it will set us up
nicely to introduce the new behavior in the following commit.

Naturally, there is some test fallout in the test which exercises the
old meaning of '--max-cruft-size'. Mark that test as failing for now to
be dealt with in the following commit. Likewise, add a new test which
explicitly tests the behavior of '--max-cruft-size' to place a hard
limit on the size of any generated cruft pack(s).

Note that this is a breaking change, as it alters the user-visible
behavior of '--max-cruft-size'. But I'm OK changing this behavior in
this instance, since the behavior wasn't accurate to begin with.

Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Acked-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>