revlog: add an experimental option to mitigated delta issues (issue5480) The general delta heuristic to select a delta do not scale with the number of branch. The delta base is frequently too far away to be able to reuse a chain according to the "distance" criteria. This leads to insertion of larger delta (or even full text) that themselves push the bases for the next delta further away leading to more large deltas and full texts. This full text and frequent recomputation throw Mercurial performance in disarray. For example of a slightly large repository 280 000 files (2 150 000 versions) 430 000 changesets (10 000 topological heads) Number below compares repository with and without the distance criteria: manifest size: with: 21.4 GB without: 0.3 GB store size: with: 28.7 GB without 7.4 GB bundle last 15 00 revisions: with: 800 seconds 971 MB without: 50 seconds 73 MB unbundle time (of the last 15K revisions): with: 1150 seconds (~19 minutes) without: 35 seconds Similar issues has been observed in other repositories. Adding a new option or "feature" on stable is uncommon. However, given that this issues is making Mercurial practically unusable, I'm exceptionally targeting this patch for stable. What is actually needed is a full rework of the delta building and reading logic. However, that will be a longer process and churn not suitable for stable. In the meantime, we introduces a quick and dirty mitigation of this in the 'experimental' config space. The new option introduces a way to set the maximum amount of memory usable to store a diff in memory. This extend the ability for Mercurial to create chains without removing all safe guard regarding memory access. The option should be phased out when core has a more proper solution available. Setting the limit to '0' remove all limits, setting it to '-1' use the default limit (textsize x 4).