Multi-Pack-Index (MIDX) Design Notes
====================================

The Git object directory contains a 'pack' directory containing
packfiles (with suffix ".pack") and pack-indexes (with suffix
".idx"). The pack-indexes provide a way to lookup objects and
navigate to their offset within the pack, but these must come
in pairs with the packfiles. This pairing depends on the file
names, as the pack-index differs only in suffix with its pack-
file. While the pack-indexes provide fast lookup per packfile,
this performance degrades as the number of packfiles increases,
because abbreviations need to inspect every packfile and we are
more likely to have a miss on our most-recently-used packfile.
For some large repositories, repacking into a single packfile
is not feasible due to storage space or excessive repack times.

The multi-pack-index (MIDX for short) stores a list of objects
and their offsets into multiple packfiles. It contains:

* A list of packfile names.
* A sorted list of object IDs.
* A list of metadata for the ith object ID including:
** A value j referring to the jth packfile.
** An offset within the jth packfile for the object.
* If large offsets are required, we use another list of large
  offsets similar to version 2 pack-indexes.
- An optional list of objects in pseudo-pack order (used with MIDX bitmaps).

Thus, we can provide O(log N) lookup time for any number
of packfiles.

Design Details
--------------

- The MIDX is stored in a file named 'multi-pack-index' in the
  .git/objects/pack directory. This could be stored in the pack
  directory of an alternate. It refers only to packfiles in that
  same directory.

- The core.multiPackIndex config setting must be on (which is the
  default) to consume MIDX files.  Setting it to `false` prevents
  Git from reading a MIDX file, even if one exists.

- The file format includes parameters for the object ID hash
  function, so a future change of hash algorithm does not require
  a change in format.

- The MIDX keeps only one record per object ID. If an object appears
  in multiple packfiles, then the MIDX selects the copy in the
  preferred packfile, otherwise selecting from the most-recently
  modified packfile.

- If there exist packfiles in the pack directory not registered in
  the MIDX, then those packfiles are loaded into the `packed_git`
  list and `packed_git_mru` cache.

- The pack-indexes (.idx files) remain in the pack directory so we
  can delete the MIDX file, set core.midx to false, or downgrade
  without any loss of information.

- The MIDX file format uses a chunk-based approach (similar to the
  commit-graph file) that allows optional data to be added.

Incremental multi-pack indexes
------------------------------

As repositories grow in size, it becomes more expensive to write a
multi-pack index (MIDX) that includes all packfiles. To accommodate
this, the "incremental multi-pack indexes" feature allows for combining
a "chain" of multi-pack indexes.

Each individual component of the chain need only contain a small number
of packfiles. Appending to the chain does not invalidate earlier parts
of the chain, so repositories can control how much time is spent
updating the MIDX chain by determining the number of packs in each layer
of the MIDX chain.

=== Design state

At present, the incremental multi-pack indexes feature is missing two
important components:

  - The ability to rewrite earlier portions of the MIDX chain (i.e., to
    "compact" some collection of adjacent MIDX layers into a single
    MIDX). At present the only supported way of shrinking a MIDX chain
    is to rewrite the entire chain from scratch without the `--split`
    flag.
+
There are no fundamental limitations that stand in the way of being able
to implement this feature. It is omitted from the initial implementation
in order to reduce the complexity, but will be added later.

  - Support for reachability bitmaps. The classic single MIDX
    implementation does support reachability bitmaps (see the section
    titled "multi-pack-index reverse indexes" in
    linkgit:gitformat-pack[5] for more details).
+
As above, there are no fundamental limitations that stand in the way of
extending the incremental MIDX format to support reachability bitmaps.
The design below specifically takes this into account, and support for
reachability bitmaps will be added in a future patch series. It is
omitted from the current implementation for the same reason as above.
+
In brief, to support reachability bitmaps with the incremental MIDX
feature, the concept of the pseudo-pack order is extended across each
layer of the incremental MIDX chain to form a concatenated pseudo-pack
order. This concatenation takes place in the same order as the chain
itself (in other words, the concatenated pseudo-pack order for a chain
`{$H1, $H2, $H3}` would be the pseudo-pack order for `$H1`, followed by
the pseudo-pack order for `$H2`, followed by the pseudo-pack order for
`$H3`).
+
The layout will then be extended so that each layer of the incremental
MIDX chain can write a `*.bitmap`. The objects in each layer's bitmap
are offset by the number of objects in the previous layers of the chain.

=== File layout

Instead of storing a single `multi-pack-index` file (with an optional
`.rev` and `.bitmap` extension) in `$GIT_DIR/objects/pack`, incremental
MIDXs are stored in the following layout:

----
$GIT_DIR/objects/pack/multi-pack-index.d/
$GIT_DIR/objects/pack/multi-pack-index.d/multi-pack-index-chain
$GIT_DIR/objects/pack/multi-pack-index.d/multi-pack-index-$H1.midx
$GIT_DIR/objects/pack/multi-pack-index.d/multi-pack-index-$H2.midx
$GIT_DIR/objects/pack/multi-pack-index.d/multi-pack-index-$H3.midx
----

The `multi-pack-index-chain` file contains a list of the incremental
MIDX files in the chain, in order. The above example shows a chain whose
`multi-pack-index-chain` file would contain the following lines:

----
$H1
$H2
$H3
----

The `multi-pack-index-$H1.midx` file contains the first layer of the
multi-pack-index chain. The `multi-pack-index-$H2.midx` file contains
the second layer of the chain, and so on.

When both an incremental- and non-incremental MIDX are present, the
non-incremental MIDX is always read first.

=== Object positions for incremental MIDXs

In the original multi-pack-index design, we refer to objects via their
lexicographic position (by object IDs) within the repository's singular
multi-pack-index. In the incremental multi-pack-index design, we refer
to objects via their index into a concatenated lexicographic ordering
among each component in the MIDX chain.

If `objects_nr()` is a function that returns the number of objects in a
given MIDX layer, then the index of an object at lexicographic position
`i` within, say, $H3 is defined as:

----
objects_nr($H2) + objects_nr($H1) + i
----

(in the C implementation, this is often computed as `i +
m->num_objects_in_base`).

Future Work
-----------

- The multi-pack-index allows many packfiles, especially in a context
  where repacking is expensive (such as a very large repo), or
  unexpected maintenance time is unacceptable (such as a high-demand
  build machine). However, the multi-pack-index needs to be rewritten
  in full every time. We can extend the format to be incremental, so
  writes are fast. By storing a small "tip" multi-pack-index that
  points to large "base" MIDX files, we can keep writes fast while
  still reducing the number of binary searches required for object
  lookups.

- If the multi-pack-index is extended to store a "stable object order"
  (a function Order(hash) = integer that is constant for a given hash,
  even as the multi-pack-index is updated) then MIDX bitmaps could be
  updated independently of the MIDX.

- Packfiles can be marked as "special" using empty files that share
  the initial name but replace ".pack" with ".keep" or ".promisor".
  We can add an optional chunk of data to the multi-pack-index that
  records flags of information about the packfiles. This allows new
  states, such as 'repacked' or 'redeltified', that can help with
  pack maintenance in a multi-pack environment. It may also be
  helpful to organize packfiles by object type (commit, tree, blob,
  etc.) and use this metadata to help that maintenance.

Related Links
-------------
[0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/git/issues/detail?id=6
    Chromium work item for: Multi-Pack Index (MIDX)

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/20180107181459.222909-1-dstolee@microsoft.com/
    An earlier RFC for the multi-pack-index feature

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/git/alpine.DEB.2.20.1803091557510.23109@alexmv-linux/
    Git Merge 2018 Contributor's summit notes (includes discussion of MIDX)
