Re: [GSoC][RFC][PROPOSAL] Reachability bitmap improvements

[Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com>]

Hi Abhradeep,

Thanks for drafting your initial GSoC proposal. Some thoughts inline:

On 07-04-2022 01:39, Abhradeep Chakraborty wrote:
>
> I am Abhradeep Chakraborty, currently pursuing B.Tech in Information
> Technology (now in my 3rd year) at Jalpaiguri Government Engineering
> College, India.
> 
> In the last two years, I mainly concentrated on learning and building
> web development things. I mainly use Django, React for my projects. But
> for the past 6 months, I have been learning about devops, cloud technologies
> ( e.g. docker, Kubernetes, AWS etc.), computer networking and core
> technologies (such as git, linux, gcc etc.). I also have an interest in
> some research based technologies like WebRTC, Web3 etc.
>

That's good to know. Do let us know if you have any experience with C
and shell programming outside of your contributions to Git.

> My ultimate objective is to be a dedicated and active contributor to all
> of these technologies. So, I want to start this contribution journey with
> `git` and therefore I want to be a part of this GSoC program.
> 
> ## Me & Git
> 
> I have started exploring the Git codebase since Sept 2021. At first, I
> mainly focused on knowing the git internals. During this time I read
> documentations (Under `Documentation` directory). `MyFirstContribution.txt`[1],
> `MyFirstObjectWalk.txt`[2] and `Hacking Git`[3] helped me to learn about the git
> contribution workflow, how `git log` ( in other words `object walk`) works
> internally.
> 
> Though I had read many documentations, I was still not able to fully
> understand the terminologies (like `refs`, `packfiles`, `blobs`, `trees`
> etc.). (ProGit)[https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2] helped me tremendously here.
> I read the full book and it cleared almost every doubt that came into my mind.
> 
> I have provided my git involvement history below. Activities are sorted
> by timeline from top to bottom.
> 
> ==============================
> PRs, Commits & Discussion Participations
> ==============================
 >
 > [ ... snip ... ]

Good to see your various contributions to Git so far. Good work!

> ## Proposed Project
> 
> ### Abstract
> 
> While sending large repositories, git has to decide what needs to be
> sent, how to be sent. For large repositories, git creates pack files
> where it packs all the related commits, trees, blobs( in the form of
> deltas and bases ), tags etc. Now, finding the related objects among
> all the objects might be very expensive.
> 
> As git only knows about the branch tips, it is very expensive to find
> the related objects from all the objects if we try to traverse down
> from the branch tips to all their respective related objects. It becomes
> more expensive as the number of objects (i.e. commits, trees, blobs
> etc.) increases. Ultimately resulting in slow fetching from the git
> daemon.
> 
> To counter that, reachability bitmaps were introduced. It uses bitmap
> data structure (an array of bits) to detect if an object is reachable
> from a particular commit or not. The commit messages of this
> (patch series)[https://lore.kernel.org/git/1372116193-32762-1-git-send-email-tanoku@gmail.com/]
> are itself a documentation of how it is achieved. All the bitmap
> indexes for selected commits (in a EWAH compressed form) are stored in
> a `.bitmap` file which has the same name of its respective packfile.
>

s/indexes/indices/

> [ ... snip ... ]
 >> ## Estimated Timeline
>
 > [ ... snip ... ]

Taylor has shared feedback on the proposal and timeline which I hope are 
helpful to you. Specifically, Taylor said:

> 
> So I think it makes sense to try and find a way you can dip your toes
> into 2-3 of the sub-projects and get a sense for what feels most doable
> and interesting, then focus on that before allocating time for more
> projects in the future.
 >

I agree with this. It's better to be practical than ambituous when 
planning the proposal.

> 
> ## Availability
> 
> I intentionally freed my summer slot for GSoC. So, there wouldn’t
> be much disturbance/inactive days while working on my project.
> Generally, I can spend nearly 35-40 hours a week on this project.
> If the college gets closed for some reason, then the amount of
> available time will increase. Smart India Hackathon finale would
> be held in July. So, I may be inactive for a few days. But overall,
> I will be available most of the time.
>

Thanks for letting us know of possible things that would interfere with 
GSoC! Do make sure to keep us posted in case you come to know of 
anything else.

> ## Post GSoC
> 
> Once the GSoC finishes, I would look into other issues/tickets and
> would send PRs solving those issues. As I said before, I want to
> be a long term contributor to git - I would definitely maintain the
> flow and continue to work on improving the overall git tool.
>

That's nice.

--
Sivaraam