Re: [PATCH v2] xdiff: disable cleanup_records heuristic with --minimal

[Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>]

Hi Niels

On 27/04/2025 23:06, Niels Glodny wrote:
> The cleanup_records function marks some lines as changed before running
> the actual diff algorithm. For most lines, this is a good performance
> optimization, but it also marks lines that are surrounded by many
> changed lines as changed as well. This can cause redundant changes and
> longer-than-necessary diffs.
> 
> Whether this results in better-looking diffs is subjective. However, the
> --minimal flag explicitly requests the shortest possible diff.
> 
> A performance impact of this is not measurable, and it results in
> shorter diffs in about 1.3% of diffs in Git's history.

Thanks for re-rolling, the changes all look good to me. As Junio said it 
would be helpful to put the performance numbers in the commit message.

Thanks

Phillip

> Signed-off-by: Niels Glodny <n.glodny@campus.lmu.de>
> ---
>   t/meson.build           |  1 +
>   t/t4071-diff-minimal.sh | 14 ++++++++++++++
>   xdiff/xprepare.c        |  5 +++--
>   3 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>   create mode 100755 t/t4071-diff-minimal.sh
> 
> diff --git a/t/meson.build b/t/meson.build
> index bfb744e886..8f2e9d2c50 100644
> --- a/t/meson.build
> +++ b/t/meson.build
> @@ -501,6 +501,7 @@ integration_tests = [
>     't4068-diff-symmetric-merge-base.sh',
>     't4069-remerge-diff.sh',
>     't4070-diff-pairs.sh',
> +  't4071-diff-minimal.sh',
>     't4100-apply-stat.sh',
>     't4101-apply-nonl.sh',
>     't4102-apply-rename.sh',
> diff --git a/t/t4071-diff-minimal.sh b/t/t4071-diff-minimal.sh
> new file mode 100755
> index 0000000000..4c484dadfb
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/t/t4071-diff-minimal.sh
> @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
> +#!/bin/sh
> +
> +test_description='minimal diff algorithm'
> +
> +. ./test-lib.sh
> +
> +test_expect_success 'minimal diff should not mark changes between changed lines' '
> +	test_write_lines x x x x >pre &&
> +	test_write_lines x x x A B C D x E F G >post &&
> +	test_expect_code 1 git diff --no-index --minimal pre post >diff &&
> +	test_grep ! ^[+-]x diff
> +'
> +
> +test_done
> diff --git a/xdiff/xprepare.c b/xdiff/xprepare.c
> index c84549f6c5..e1d4017b2d 100644
> --- a/xdiff/xprepare.c
> +++ b/xdiff/xprepare.c
> @@ -368,6 +368,7 @@ static int xdl_cleanup_records(xdlclassifier_t *cf, xdfile_t *xdf1, xdfile_t *xd
>   	xrecord_t **recs;
>   	xdlclass_t *rcrec;
>   	char *dis, *dis1, *dis2;
> +	int need_min = !!(cf->flags & XDF_NEED_MINIMAL);
>   
>   	if (!XDL_CALLOC_ARRAY(dis, xdf1->nrec + xdf2->nrec + 2))
>   		return -1;
> @@ -379,7 +380,7 @@ static int xdl_cleanup_records(xdlclassifier_t *cf, xdfile_t *xdf1, xdfile_t *xd
>   	for (i = xdf1->dstart, recs = &xdf1->recs[xdf1->dstart]; i <= xdf1->dend; i++, recs++) {
>   		rcrec = cf->rcrecs[(*recs)->ha];
>   		nm = rcrec ? rcrec->len2 : 0;
> -		dis1[i] = (nm == 0) ? 0: (nm >= mlim) ? 2: 1;
> +		dis1[i] = (nm == 0) ? 0: (nm >= mlim && !need_min) ? 2: 1;
>   	}
>   
>   	if ((mlim = xdl_bogosqrt(xdf2->nrec)) > XDL_MAX_EQLIMIT)
> @@ -387,7 +388,7 @@ static int xdl_cleanup_records(xdlclassifier_t *cf, xdfile_t *xdf1, xdfile_t *xd
>   	for (i = xdf2->dstart, recs = &xdf2->recs[xdf2->dstart]; i <= xdf2->dend; i++, recs++) {
>   		rcrec = cf->rcrecs[(*recs)->ha];
>   		nm = rcrec ? rcrec->len1 : 0;
> -		dis2[i] = (nm == 0) ? 0: (nm >= mlim) ? 2: 1;
> +		dis2[i] = (nm == 0) ? 0: (nm >= mlim && !need_min) ? 2: 1;
>   	}
>   
>   	for (nreff = 0, i = xdf1->dstart, recs = &xdf1->recs[xdf1->dstart];
> 
> base-commit: f65182a99e545d2f2bc22e6c1c2da192133b16a3