57 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
57 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
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## Why not git tree objects?
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We've been experimenting with (some variations of) the git tree and object
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format, and ultimately decided against using it as an internal format, and
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instead adapted the one documented in the other documents here.
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While the tvix-store API protocol shares some similarities with the format used
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in git for trees and objects, the git one has shown some significant
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disadvantages:
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### The binary encoding itself
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#### trees
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The git tree object format is a very binary, error-prone and
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"made-to-be-read-and-written-from-C" format.
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Tree objects are a combination of null-terminated strings, and fields of known
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length. References to other tree objects use the literal sha1 hash of another
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tree object in this encoding.
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Extensions of the format/changes are very hard to do right, because parsers are
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not aware they might be parsing something different.
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The tvix-store protocol uses a canonical protobuf serialization, and uses
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the [blake3][blake3] hash of that serialization to point to other `Directory`
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messages.
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It's both compact and with a wide range of libraries for encoders and decoders
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in many programming languages.
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The choice of protobuf makes it easy to add new fields, and make old clients
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aware of some unknown fields being detected [^adding-fields].
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#### blob
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On disk, git blob objects start with a "blob" prefix, then the size of the
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payload, and then the data itself. The hash of a blob is the literal sha1sum
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over all of this - which makes it something very git specific to request for.
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tvix-store simply uses the [blake3][blake3] hash of the literal contents
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when referring to a file/blob, which makes it very easy to ask other data
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sources for the same data, as no git-specific payload is included in the hash.
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This also plays very well together with things like [iroh][iroh-discussion],
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which plans to provide a way to substitute (large)blobs by their blake3 hash
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over the IPFS network.
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In addition to that, [blake3][blake3] makes it possible to do
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[verified streaming][bao], as already described in other parts of the
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documentation.
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The git tree object format uses sha1 both for references to other trees and
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hashes of blobs, which isn't really a hash function to fundamentally base
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everything on in 2023.
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The [migration to sha256][git-sha256] also has been dead for some years now,
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and it's unclear how a "blake3" version of this would even look like.
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[bao]: https://github.com/oconnor663/bao
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[blake3]: https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3
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[git-sha256]: https://git-scm.com/docs/hash-function-transition/
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[iroh-discussion]: https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh/discussions/707#discussioncomment-5070197
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[^adding-fields]: Obviously, adding new fields will change hashes, but it's something that's easy to detect.
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