mercurial/help/internals/linelog.txt

linelog is a storage format inspired by the "Interleaved deltas" idea. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaved_deltas for its introduction.

0. SCCS Weave

  To understand what linelog is, first we have a quick look at a simplified
  (with header removed) SCCS weave format, which is an implementation of the
  "Interleaved deltas" idea.

0.1 Basic SCCS Weave File Format

  A SCCS weave file consists of plain text lines. Each line is either a
  special instruction starting with "^A" or part of the content of the real
  file the weave tracks. There are 3 important operations, where REV denotes
  the revision number:

    ^AI REV, marking the beginning of an insertion block introduced by REV
    ^AD REV, marking the beginning of a deletion block introduced by REV
    ^AE REV, marking the end of the block started by "^AI REV" or "^AD REV"

  Note on revision numbers: For any two different revision numbers, one must
  be an ancestor of the other to make them comparable. This enforces linear
  history. Besides, the comparison functions (">=", "<") should be efficient.
  This means, if revisions are strings like git or hg, an external map is
  required to convert them into integers.

  For example, to represent the following changes:

    REV 1 | REV 2 | REV 3
    ------+-------+-------
    a     | a     | a
    b     | b     | 2
    c     | 1     | c
          | 2     |
          | c     |

  A possible weave file looks like:

    ^AI 1
    a
    ^AD 3
    b
    ^AI 2
    1
    ^AE 3
    2
    ^AE 2
    c
    ^AE 1

  An "^AE" does not always match its nearest operation ("^AI" or "^AD"). In
  the above example, "^AE 3" does not match the nearest "^AI 2" but "^AD 3".
  Therefore we need some extra information for "^AE". The SCCS weave uses a
  revision number. It could also be a boolean value about whether it is an
  insertion or a deletion (see section 0.4).

0.2 Checkout

  The "checkout" operation is to retrieve file content at a given revision,
  say X. It's doable by going through the file line by line and:

    - If meet ^AI rev, and rev > X, find the corresponding ^AE and jump there
    - If meet ^AD rev, and rev <= X, find the corresponding ^AE and jump there
    - Ignore ^AE
    - For normal lines, just output them

0.3 Annotate

  The "annotate" operation is to show extra metadata like the revision number
  and the original line number a line comes from.

  It's basically just a "Checkout". For the extra metadata, they can be stored
  side by side with the line contents. Alternatively, we can infer the
  revision number from "^AI"s.

  Some SCM tools have to calculate diffs on the fly and thus are much slower
  on this operation.

0.4 Tree Structure

  The word "interleaved" is used because "^AI" .. "^AE" and "^AD" .. "^AE"
  blocks can be interleaved.

  If we consider insertions and deletions separately, they can form tree
  structures, respectively.

    +--- ^AI 1        +--- ^AD 3
    | +- ^AI 2        | +- ^AD 2
    | |               | |
    | +- ^AE 2        | +- ^AE 2
    |                 |
    +--- ^AE 1        +--- ^AE 3

  More specifically, it's possible to build a tree for all insertions, where
  the tree node has the structure "(rev, startline, endline)". "startline" is
  the line number of "^AI" and "endline" is the line number of the matched
  "^AE".  The tree will have these properties:

    1. child.rev > parent.rev
    2. child.startline > parent.startline
    3. child.endline < parent.endline

  A similar tree for all deletions can also be built with the first property
  changed to:

    1. child.rev < parent.rev

0.5 Malformed Cases

  The following cases are considered malformed in our implementation:

    1. Interleaved insertions, or interleaved deletions.
       It can be rewritten to a non-interleaved tree structure.

       Take insertions as example, deletions are similar:

       ^AI x         ^AI x
       a             a
       ^AI x + 1  -> ^AI x + 1
       b             b
       ^AE x         ^AE x + 1
       c             ^AE x
       ^AE x + 1     ^AI x + 1
                     c
                     ^AE x + 1

    2. Nested insertions, where the inner one has a smaller revision number.
       Or nested deletions, where the inner one has a larger revision number.
       It can be rewritten to a non-nested form.

       Take insertions as example, deletions are similar:

       ^AI x + 1     ^AI x + 1
       a             a
       ^AI x      -> ^AE x + 1
       b             ^AI x
       ^AE x         b
       c             ^AE x
       ^AE x + 1     ^AI x + 1
                     c
                     ^AE x + 1

    3. Insertion inside deletion with a smaller revision number.

       Rewrite by duplicating the content inserted:

       ^AD x          ^AD x
       a              a
       ^AI x + 1  ->  b
       b              c
       ^AE x + 1      ^AE x
       c              ^AI x + 1
       ^AE x          b
                      ^AE x + 1

       Note: If "annotate" purely depends on "^AI" information, then the
       duplication content will lose track of where "b" is originally from.

  Some of them may be valid in other implementations for special purposes. For
  example, to "revive" a previously deleted block in a newer revision.

0.6 Cases Can Be Optimized

  It's always better to get things nested. For example, the left is more
  efficient than the right while they represent the same content:

    +--- ^AD 2          +- ^AD 1
    | +- ^AD 1          |   LINE A
    | |   LINE A        +- ^AE 1
    | +- ^AE 1          +- ^AD 2
    |     LINE B        |   LINE B
    +--- ^AE 2          +- ^AE 2

  Our implementation sometimes generates the less efficient data. To always
  get the optimal form, it requires extra code complexity that seems unworthy.

0.7 Inefficiency

  The file format can be slow because:

  - Inserting a new line at position P requires rewriting all data after P.
  - Finding "^AE" requires walking through the content (O(N), where N is the
    number of lines between "^AI/D" and "^AE").

1. Linelog

  The linelog is a binary format that dedicates to speed up mercurial (or
  git)'s "annotate" operation. It's designed to avoid issues mentioned in
  section 0.7.

1.1 Content Stored

  Linelog is not another storage for file contents. It only stores line
  numbers and corresponding revision numbers, instead of actual line content.
  This is okay for the "annotate" operation because usually the external
  source is fast to checkout the content of a file at a specific revision.

  A typical SCCS weave is also fast on the "grep" operation, which needs
  random accesses to line contents from different revisions of a file. This
  can be slow with linelog's no-line-content design. However we could use
  an extra map ((rev, line num) -> line content) to speed it up.

  Note the revision numbers in linelog should be independent from mercurial
  integer revision numbers. There should be some mapping between linelog rev
  and hg hash stored side by side, to make the files reusable after being
  copied to another machine.

1.2 Basic Format

  A linelog file consists of "instruction"s. An "instruction" can be either:

    - JGE  REV ADDR     # jump to ADDR if rev >= REV
    - JL   REV ADDR     # jump to ADDR if rev < REV
    - LINE REV LINENUM  # append the (LINENUM+1)-th line in revision REV

  For example, here is the example linelog representing the same file with
  3 revisions mentioned in section 0.1:

    SCCS  |    Linelog
    Weave | Addr : Instruction
    ------+------+-------------
    ^AI 1 |    0 : JL   1 8
    a     |    1 : LINE 1 0
    ^AD 3 |    2 : JGE  3 6
    b     |    3 : LINE 1 1
    ^AI 2 |    4 : JL   2 7
    1     |    5 : LINE 2 2
    ^AE 3 |
    2     |    6 : LINE 2 3
    ^AE 2 |
    c     |    7 : LINE 1 2
    ^AE 1 |
          |    8 : END

  This way, "find ^AE" is O(1) because we just jump there. And we can insert
  new lines without rewriting most part of the file by appending new lines and
  changing a single instruction to jump to them.

  The current implementation uses 64 bits for an instruction: The opcode (JGE,
  JL or LINE) takes 2 bits, REV takes 30 bits and ADDR or LINENUM takes 32
  bits. It also stores the max revision number and buffer size at the first
  64 bits for quick access to these values.

1.3 Comparing with Mercurial's revlog format

  Apparently, linelog is very different from revlog: linelog stores rev and
  line numbers, while revlog has line contents and other metadata (like
  parents, flags). However, the revlog format could also be used to store rev
  and line numbers. For example, to speed up the annotate operation, we could
  also pre-calculate annotate results and just store them using the revlog
  format.

  Therefore, linelog is actually somehow similar to revlog, with the important
  trade-off that it only supports linear history (mentioned in section 0.1).
  Essentially, the differences are:

    a) Linelog is full of deltas, while revlog could contain full file
       contents sometimes. So linelog is smaller. Revlog could trade
       reconstruction speed for file size - best case, revlog is as small as
       linelog.
    b) The interleaved delta structure allows skipping large portion of
       uninteresting deltas so linelog's content reconstruction is faster than
       the delta-only version of revlog (however it's possible to construct
       a case where interleaved deltas degrade to plain deltas, so linelog
       worst case would be delta-only revlog). Revlog could trade file size
       for reconstruction speed.
    c) Linelog implicitly maintains the order of all lines it stores. So it
       could dump all the lines from all revisions, with a reasonable order.
       While revlog could also dump all line additions, it requires extra
       computation to figure out the order putting those lines - that's some
       kind of "merge".

  "c" makes "hg absorb" easier to implement and makes it possible to do
  "annotate --deleted".

1.4 Malformed Cases Handling

  The following "case 1", "case 2", and "case 3" refer to cases mentioned
  in section 0.5.

  Using the exposed API (replacelines), case 1 is impossible to generate,
  although it's possible to generate it by constructing rawdata and load that
  via linelog.fromdata.

  Doing annotate(maxrev) before replacelines (aka. a1, a2 passed to
  replacelines are related to the latest revision) eliminates the possibility
  of case 3. That makes sense since usually you'd like to make edits on top of
  the latest revision. Practically, both absorb and fastannotate do this.

  Doing annotate(maxrev), plus replacelines(rev, ...) where rev >= maxrev
  eliminates the possibility of case 2. That makes sense since usually the
  edits belong to "new revisions", not "old revisions". Practically,
  fastannotate does this. Absorb calls replacelines with rev < maxrev to edit
  past revisions. So it needs some extra care to not generate case 2.

  If case 1 occurs, that probably means linelog file corruption (assuming
  linelog is edited via public APIs) the checkout or annotate result could
  be less meaningful or even error out, but linelog wouldn't enter an infinite
  loop.

  If either case 2 or 3 occurs, linelog works as if the inner "^AI/D" and "^AE"
  operations on the left side are silently ignored.