builtin/repack.c: add '--geometric' option

Often it is useful to both:

  - have relatively few packfiles in a repository, and

  - avoid having so few packfiles in a repository that we repack its
    entire contents regularly

This patch implements a '--geometric=<n>' option in 'git repack'. This
allows the caller to specify that they would like each pack to be at
least a factor times as large as the previous largest pack (by object
count).

Concretely, say that a repository has 'n' packfiles, labeled P1, P2,
..., up to Pn. Each packfile has an object count equal to 'objects(Pn)'.
With a geometric factor of 'r', it should be that:

  objects(Pi) > r*objects(P(i-1))

for all i in [1, n], where the packs are sorted by

  objects(P1) <= objects(P2) <= ... <= objects(Pn).

Since finding a true optimal repacking is NP-hard, we approximate it
along two directions:

  1. We assume that there is a cutoff of packs _before starting the
     repack_ where everything to the right of that cut-off already forms
     a geometric progression (or no cutoff exists and everything must be
     repacked).

  2. We assume that everything smaller than the cutoff count must be
     repacked. This forms our base assumption, but it can also cause
     even the "heavy" packs to get repacked, for e.g., if we have 6
     packs containing the following number of objects:

       1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 32

     then we would place the cutoff between '1, 1' and '1, 2, 4, 32',
     rolling up the first two packs into a pack with 2 objects. That
     breaks our progression and leaves us:

       2, 1, 2, 4, 32
         ^

     (where the '^' indicates the position of our split). To restore a
     progression, we move the split forward (towards larger packs)
     joining each pack into our new pack until a geometric progression
     is restored. Here, that looks like:

       2, 1, 2, 4, 32  ~>  3, 2, 4, 32  ~>  5, 4, 32  ~> ... ~> 9, 32
         ^                   ^                ^                   ^

This has the advantage of not repacking the heavy-side of packs too
often while also only creating one new pack at a time. Another wrinkle
is that we assume that loose, indexed, and reflog'd objects are
insignificant, and lump them into any new pack that we create. This can
lead to non-idempotent results.

Suggested-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Reviewed-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 23 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git-repack.txt b/Documentation/git-repack.txt
index 92f146d27d..136da9fa0b 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-repack.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-repack.txt
@@ -165,6 +165,29 @@ depth is 4095.
 	Pass the `--delta-islands` option to `git-pack-objects`, see
 	linkgit:git-pack-objects[1].
 
+-g=<factor>::
+--geometric=<factor>::
+	Arrange resulting pack structure so that each successive pack
+	contains at least `<factor>` times the number of objects as the
+	next-largest pack.
++
+`git repack` ensures this by determining a "cut" of packfiles that need
+to be repacked into one in order to ensure a geometric progression. It
+picks the smallest set of packfiles such that as many of the larger
+packfiles (by count of objects contained in that pack) may be left
+intact.
++
+Unlike other repack modes, the set of objects to pack is determined
+uniquely by the set of packs being "rolled-up"; in other words, the
+packs determined to need to be combined in order to restore a geometric
+progression.
++
+When `--unpacked` is specified, loose objects are implicitly included in
+this "roll-up", without respect to their reachability. This is subject
+to change in the future. This option (implying a drastically different
+repack mode) is not guaranteed to work with all other combinations of
+option to `git repack`).
+
 Configuration
 -------------