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authorVincent Ambo <mail@tazj.in>2023-02-02T12·51+0300
committertazjin <tazjin@tvl.su>2023-02-02T17·50+0000
commit9d6f29a72b3b466dd697c2eaa97f9a41b767fdff (patch)
treeb8964a57844dae703390247886b0530594c8a147 /tvix/README.md
parent2c07ff0f8c126cb475c6e100b56bbaa03303dda7 (diff)
refactor(tvix/cli): use Wu-Manber string scanning for drv references r/5825
Switch out the string-scanning algorithm used in the reference scanner.

The construction of aho-corasick automata made up the vast majority of
runtime when evaluating nixpkgs previously. While the actual scanning
with a constructed automaton is relatively fast, we almost never scan
for the same set of strings twice and the cost is not worth it.

An algorithm that better matches our needs is the Wu-Manber multiple
string match algorithm, which works efficiently on *long* and *random*
strings of the *same length*, which describes store paths (up to their
hash component).

This switches the refscanner crate to a Rust implementation[0][1] of
this algorithm.

This has several implications:

1. This crate does not provide a way to scan streams. I'm not sure if
   this is an inherent problem with the algorithm (probably not, but
   it would need buffering). Either way, related functions and
   tests (which were actually unused) have been removed.

2. All strings need to be of the same length. For this reason, we
   truncate the known paths after their hash part (they are still
   unique, of course).

3. Passing an empty set of matches, or a match that is shorter than
   the length of a store path, causes the crate to panic. We safeguard
   against this by completely skipping the refscanning if there are no
   known paths (i.e. when evaluating the first derivation of an eval),
   and by bailing out of scanning a string that is shorter than a
   store path.

On the upside, this reduces overall runtime to less 1/5 of what it was
before when evaluating `pkgs.stdenv.drvPath`.

[0]: Frankly, it's a random, research-grade MIT-licensed
     crate that I found on Github:

     https://github.com/jneem/wu-manber

[1]: We probably want to rewrite or at least fork the above crate, and
     add things like a three-byte wide scanner. Evaluating large
     portions of nixpkgs can easily lead to more than 65k derivations
     being scanned for.

Change-Id: I08926778e1e5d5a87fc9ac26e0437aed8bbd9eb0
Reviewed-on: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/8017
Tested-by: BuildkiteCI
Reviewed-by: flokli <flokli@flokli.de>
Diffstat (limited to 'tvix/README.md')
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