rsync very slow with large include/exclude file list

[Ken Chase]

This is similar to using fuzzy / -y in a large directory. O(n^2) behaviour
occurs and can be incredibly slow. No caching of md5's for the directory
occurs, it would seem (or even so, there are O(N^2) comparisons).

/kc


On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 06:02:14PM -0500, ray vantassle said:
  >   I investigated the rsync code and found the reason why.
  >   For every file in the source, it searches the entire filter-list looking
  >   to see if that filename is on the exclude/include list.** Most aren't, so
  >   it compares (350K - 72K) * 72K names (the non-listed files) plus (72K *
  >   72K/2) names (the ones that are listed), for a total of about**
  >   22,608,000,000 strcmp's.** That's 22 BILLION comparisons. (I may have left
  >   off a zero there, it might be 220 B).
  >
  >   I'm working on a fix to improve this.** The first phase was to just
  >   improve the existing code without changing the methodology.
  >   The set I've been testing with is local-local machine, dry-run, 216K files
  >   in the source directory, 25,000 files in the exclude-from list.
  >   The original rsync takes 488 seconds.
  >   The improved code takes 300 seconds.
  >
  >   The next phase was to improve the algorithm of handling large
  >   filter_lists.** Change the unsorted linear search to a sorted binary
  >   search (skiplist).
  >   This improved code takes 2 seconds.
  >
  >   The original code does 4,492,304,682 strcmp's.
  >   The fully improved code does 6,472,564.** 98.5% fewer.
  >
  >   I am cleaning up the code and will submit a patchfile soon.

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Ken Chase - ken at heavycomputing.ca skype:kenchase23 +1 416 897 6284 Toronto Canada
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