For a long time (since 2019) git-annex has been progressively converting from
-FilePath to RawFilePath (aka ByteString).
+FilePath to RawFilePath. And more recently, to OsPath.
+
+[[!meta title="OsPath conversion"]]
The reason is mostly performance, also a simpler representation of
filepaths that doesn't need encoding hacks to support non-UTF8 values.
-Some commands like `git-annex find` use RawFilePath end-to-end.
-But this conversion is not yet complete. This is a todo to keep track of the
-status.
+Some commands like `git-annex find` have been converted end-to-end
+with good performance results. And OsPath is used very widly now.
+But this conversion is not yet complete. This is a todo to keep track
+of the status.
+
+* The OsPath build flag makes git-annex build with OsPath. Otherwise,
+ it builds with RawFilePath. The plan is to make that build flag the
+ default where it is not already as time goes on. And then eventually
+ remove the build flag and simplify code in git-annex to not need to
+ support two different build methods.
* unix has modules that operate on RawFilePath but no OSPath versions yet.
See https://github.com/haskell/unix/issues/240
-* filepath-1.4.100 implements support for OSPath. It is bundled with
- ghc-9.6.1 and above. Will need to switch from filepath-bytestring to
- this, and to avoid a lot of ifdefs, probably only after git-annex no
- longers supports building with older ghc versions. This will entail
- replacing all the RawFilePath with OsPath, which should be pretty
- mechanical, with only some wrapper functions in Utility.FileIO and
- Utility.RawFilePath needing to be changed.
-* As part of the OsPath conversion, Git.LsFiles has several
- `pipeNullSplit'` calls that have toOsPath mapped over the results.
- That adds an additional copy, so the lazy ByteString is converted to strict,
+ However, this is not really a performance problem, because converting
+ from an OsPath to a RawFilePath in order to use such a function
+ is the same amount of work as calling a native OsPath version of the
+ function would be, because passing a ShortByteString into the FFI entails
+ making a copy of it.
+
+* filepath-bytestring is used when not building with OsPath. It's also
+ in Setup-Depends. In order to stop needing to maintain that library,
+ the goal is to eliminate it from dependencies. This may need to wait
+ until the OsPath build flag is removed and OsPath is always used.
+
+* Git.LsFiles has several `pipeNullSplit'` calls that have toOsPath
+ mapped over the results. That adds an additional copy, so the lazy
+ ByteString is converted to strict,
and then to ShortByteString, with a copy each time. This is in the
critical path for large git repos, and might be a noticable slowdown.
There is currently no easy way to go direct from a lazy ByteString to a
and unsafePerformIO to stream to a list would avoid needing to rewrite
this code to not use a list.
-[[!tag confirmed]]
-
-----
+* OsPath has by now been pushed about as far as it will go, but here and
+ there use of FilePath remains in odd corners. These are unlikely to cause
+ any noticiable performance impact.
-The following patch can be useful to find points where conversions are
-done. Especially useful to identify cases where a value is converted
-`FilePath -> RawFilePath -> FilePath`.
-
- diff --git a/Utility/FileSystemEncoding.hs b/Utility/FileSystemEncoding.hs
- index 2a1dc81bc1..03e6986f6e 100644
- --- a/Utility/FileSystemEncoding.hs
- +++ b/Utility/FileSystemEncoding.hs
- @@ -84,6 +84,9 @@ encodeBL = L.fromStrict . encodeBS
- encodeBL = L8.fromString
- #endif
-
- +debugConversions :: String -> IO ()
- +debugConversions s = hPutStrLn stderr ("conversion: " ++ s)
- +
- decodeBS :: S.ByteString -> FilePath
- #ifndef mingw32_HOST_OS
- -- This does the same thing as System.FilePath.ByteString.decodeFilePath,
- @@ -92,6 +95,7 @@ decodeBS :: S.ByteString -> FilePath
- -- something other than a unix filepath.
- {-# NOINLINE decodeBS #-}
- decodeBS b = unsafePerformIO $ do
- + debugConversions (show b)
- enc <- Encoding.getFileSystemEncoding
- S.useAsCStringLen b (GHC.peekCStringLen enc)
- #else
- @@ -106,17 +110,19 @@ encodeBS :: FilePath -> S.ByteString
- -- something other than a unix filepath.
- {-# NOINLINE encodeBS #-}
- encodeBS f = unsafePerformIO $ do
- + debugConversions f
- enc <- Encoding.getFileSystemEncoding
- - GHC.newCStringLen enc f >>= unsafePackMallocCStringLen
- + b <- GHC.newCStringLen enc f >>= unsafePackMallocCStringLen
- + return b
- #else
- encodeBS = S8.fromString
- #endif
-
- fromRawFilePath :: RawFilePath -> FilePath
- -fromRawFilePath = decodeFilePath
- +fromRawFilePath = decodeBS -- decodeFilePath
-
- toRawFilePath :: FilePath -> RawFilePath
- -toRawFilePath = encodeFilePath
- +toRawFilePath = encodeBS -- encodeFilePath
-
- {- Truncates a FilePath to the given number of bytes (or less),
- - as represented on disk.
+[[!tag confirmed]]