parse_object(): allow skipping hash check

The parse_object() function checks the object hash of any object it
parses. This is a nice feature, as it means we may catch bit corruption
during normal use, rather than waiting for specific fsck operations.

But it also can be slow. It's particularly noticeable for blobs, where
except for the hash check, we could return without loading the object
contents at all. Now one may wonder what is the point of calling
parse_object() on a blob in the first place then, but usually it's not
intentional: we were fed an oid from somewhere, don't know the type, and
want an object struct. For commits and trees, the parsing is usually
helpful; we're about to look at the contents anyway. But this is less
true for blobs, where we may be collecting them as part of a
reachability traversal, etc, and don't actually care what's in them. And
blobs, of course, tend to be larger.

We don't want to just throw out the hash-checks for blobs, though. We do
depend on them in some circumstances (e.g., rev-list --verify-objects
uses parse_object() to check them). It's only the callers that know
how they're going to use the result. And so we can help them by
providing a special flag to skip the hash check.

We could just apply this to blobs, as they're going to be the main
source of performance improvement. But if a caller doesn't care about
checking the hash, we might as well skip it for other object types, too.
Even though we can't avoid reading the object contents, we can still
skip the actual hash computation.

If this seems like it is making Git a little bit less safe against
corruption, it may be. But it's part of a series of tradeoffs we're
already making. For instance, "rev-list --objects" does not open the
contents of blobs it prints. And when a commit graph is present, we skip
opening most commits entirely. The important thing will be to use this
flag in cases where it's safe to skip the check. For instance, when
serving a pack for a fetch, we know the client will fully index the
objects and do a connectivity check itself. There's little to be gained
from the server side re-hashing a blob itself. And indeed, most of the
time we don't! The revision machinery won't open up a blob reached by
traversal, but only one requested directly with a "want" line. So
applied properly, this new feature shouldn't make anything less safe in
practice.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/object.h b/object.h
index 9caef89f1f..31ebe11458 100644
--- a/object.h
+++ b/object.h
@@ -128,7 +128,13 @@ void *object_as_type(struct object *obj, enum object_type type, int quiet);
  *
  * Returns NULL if the object is missing or corrupt.
  */
+enum parse_object_flags {
+	PARSE_OBJECT_SKIP_HASH_CHECK = 1 << 0,
+};
 struct object *parse_object(struct repository *r, const struct object_id *oid);
+struct object *parse_object_with_flags(struct repository *r,
+				       const struct object_id *oid,
+				       enum parse_object_flags flags);
 
 /*
  * Like parse_object, but will die() instead of returning NULL. If the