Re: [PATCH 6/8] implement metadata cache subsystem

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

There are some calculations that git makes repeatedly, even
though the results are invariant for a certain input (e.g.,
the patch-id of a certain commit). We can make a space/time
tradeoff by caching these on disk between runs.

Even though these may be immutable for a certain commit, we
don't want to directly store the results in the commit
objects themselves, for a few reasons:

  1. They are not necessarily used by all algorithms, so
     bloating the commit object might slow down other
     algorithms.

  2. Because they can be calculated from the existing
     commits, they are redundant with the existing
     information. Thus they are an implementation detail of
     our current algorithms, and should not be cast in stone
     by including them in the commit sha1.

  3. They may only be immutable under a certain set of
     conditions (e.g., which grafts or replace refs we are
     using). Keeping the storage external means we can
     invalidate and regenerate the cache whenever those
     conditions change.

4. The algorithm used to compute such values could improve over
time.  The same advantage argument as 3 applies to this case.