gitformat-chunk(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | WRITING CHUNK-BASED FILE FORMATS | READING CHUNK-BASED FILE FORMATS | EXAMPLES | GIT | COLOPHON

GITFORMAT-CHUNK(5)             Git Manual             GITFORMAT-CHUNK(5)

NAME         top

       gitformat-chunk - Chunk-based file formats

SYNOPSIS         top

       Used by gitformat-commit-graph(5) and the "MIDX" format (see the
       pack format documentation in gitformat-pack(5)).

DESCRIPTION         top

       Some file formats in Git use a common concept of "chunks" to
       describe sections of the file. This allows structured access to a
       large file by scanning a small "table of contents" for the
       remaining data. This common format is used by the commit-graph
       and multi-pack-index files. See the multi-pack-index format in
       gitformat-pack(5) and the commit-graph format in
       gitformat-commit-graph(5) for how they use the chunks to describe
       structured data.

       A chunk-based file format begins with some header information
       custom to that format. That header should include enough
       information to identify the file type, format version, and number
       of chunks in the file. From this information, that file can
       determine the start of the chunk-based region.

       The chunk-based region starts with a table of contents describing
       where each chunk starts and ends. This consists of (C+1) rows of
       12 bytes each, where C is the number of chunks. Consider the
       following table:

           | Chunk ID (4 bytes) | Chunk Offset (8 bytes) |
           |--------------------|------------------------|
           | ID[0]              | OFFSET[0]              |
           | ...                | ...                    |
           | ID[C]              | OFFSET[C]              |
           | 0x0000             | OFFSET[C+1]            |

       Each row consists of a 4-byte chunk identifier (ID) and an 8-byte
       offset. Each integer is stored in network-byte order.

       The chunk identifier ID[i] is a label for the data stored within
       this file from OFFSET[i] (inclusive) to OFFSET[i+1] (exclusive).
       Thus, the size of the i`th chunk is equal to the difference
       between `OFFSET[i+1] and OFFSET[i]. This requires that the chunk
       data appears contiguously in the same order as the table of
       contents.

       The final entry in the table of contents must be four zero bytes.
       This confirms that the table of contents is ending and provides
       the offset for the end of the chunk-based data.

       Note: The chunk-based format expects that the file contains at
       least a trailing hash after OFFSET[C+1].

       Functions for working with chunk-based file formats are declared
       in chunk-format.h. Using these methods provide extra checks that
       assist developers when creating new file formats.

WRITING CHUNK-BASED FILE FORMATS         top

       To write a chunk-based file format, create a struct chunkfile by
       calling init_chunkfile() and pass a struct hashfile pointer. The
       caller is responsible for opening the hashfile and writing header
       information so the file format is identifiable before the
       chunk-based format begins.

       Then, call add_chunk() for each chunk that is intended for
       writing. This populates the chunkfile with information about the
       order and size of each chunk to write. Provide a chunk_write_fn
       function pointer to perform the write of the chunk data upon
       request.

       Call write_chunkfile() to write the table of contents to the
       hashfile followed by each of the chunks. This will verify that
       each chunk wrote the expected amount of data so the table of
       contents is correct.

       Finally, call free_chunkfile() to clear the struct chunkfile
       data. The caller is responsible for finalizing the hashfile by
       writing the trailing hash and closing the file.

READING CHUNK-BASED FILE FORMATS         top

       To read a chunk-based file format, the file must be opened as a
       memory-mapped region. The chunk-format API expects that the
       entire file is mapped as a contiguous memory region.

       Initialize a struct chunkfile pointer with init_chunkfile(NULL).

       After reading the header information from the beginning of the
       file, including the chunk count, call read_table_of_contents() to
       populate the struct chunkfile with the list of chunks, their
       offsets, and their sizes.

       Extract the data information for each chunk using pair_chunk() or
       read_chunk():

       •   pair_chunk() assigns a given pointer with the location inside
           the memory-mapped file corresponding to that chunk’s offset.
           If the chunk does not exist, then the pointer is not
           modified.

       •   read_chunk() takes a chunk_read_fn function pointer and calls
           it with the appropriate initial pointer and size information.
           The function is not called if the chunk does not exist. Use
           this method to read chunks if you need to perform immediate
           parsing or if you need to execute logic based on the size of
           the chunk.

       After calling these methods, call free_chunkfile() to clear the
       struct chunkfile data. This will not close the memory-mapped
       region. Callers are expected to own that data for the timeframe
       the pointers into the region are needed.

EXAMPLES         top

       These file formats use the chunk-format API, and can be used as
       examples for future formats:

       •   commit-graph: see write_commit_graph_file() and
           parse_commit_graph() in commit-graph.c for how the
           chunk-format API is used to write and parse the commit-graph
           file format documented in the commit-graph file format in
           gitformat-commit-graph(5).

       •   multi-pack-index: see write_midx_internal() and
           load_multi_pack_index() in midx.c for how the chunk-format
           API is used to write and parse the multi-pack-index file
           format documented in the multi-pack-index file format section
           of gitformat-pack(5).

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
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       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that time,
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.45.2.492.gd63586         2024-06-12             GITFORMAT-CHUNK(5)

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