core.fsyncmethod: add writeout-only mode

This commit introduces the `core.fsyncMethod` configuration
knob, which can currently be set to `fsync` or `writeout-only`.

The new writeout-only mode attempts to tell the operating system to
flush its in-memory page cache to the storage hardware without issuing a
CACHE_FLUSH command to the storage controller.

Writeout-only fsync is significantly faster than a vanilla fsync on
common hardware, since data is written to a disk-side cache rather than
all the way to a durable medium. Later changes in this patch series will
take advantage of this primitive to implement batching of hardware
flushes.

When git_fsync is called with FSYNC_WRITEOUT_ONLY, it may fail and the
caller is expected to do an ordinary fsync as needed.

On Apple platforms, the fsync system call does not issue a CACHE_FLUSH
directive to the storage controller. This change updates fsync to do
fcntl(F_FULLFSYNC) to make fsync actually durable. We maintain parity
with existing behavior on Apple platforms by setting the default value
of the new core.fsyncMethod option.

Signed-off-by: Neeraj Singh <neerajsi@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

2 files changed, 31 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/compat/mingw.h b/compat/mingw.h
index c9a52ad..6074a3d 100644
--- a/compat/mingw.h
+++ b/compat/mingw.h
@@ -329,6 +329,9 @@ int mingw_getpagesize(void);
 #define getpagesize mingw_getpagesize
 #endif
 
+int win32_fsync_no_flush(int fd);
+#define fsync_no_flush win32_fsync_no_flush
+
 struct rlimit {
 	unsigned int rlim_cur;
 };
diff --git a/compat/win32/flush.c b/compat/win32/flush.c
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..291f90e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/compat/win32/flush.c
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+#include "git-compat-util.h"
+#include <winternl.h>
+#include "lazyload.h"
+
+int win32_fsync_no_flush(int fd)
+{
+       IO_STATUS_BLOCK io_status;
+
+#define FLUSH_FLAGS_FILE_DATA_ONLY 1
+
+       DECLARE_PROC_ADDR(ntdll.dll, NTSTATUS, NTAPI, NtFlushBuffersFileEx,
+			 HANDLE FileHandle, ULONG Flags, PVOID Parameters, ULONG ParameterSize,
+			 PIO_STATUS_BLOCK IoStatusBlock);
+
+       if (!INIT_PROC_ADDR(NtFlushBuffersFileEx)) {
+		errno = ENOSYS;
+		return -1;
+       }
+
+       memset(&io_status, 0, sizeof(io_status));
+       if (NtFlushBuffersFileEx((HANDLE)_get_osfhandle(fd), FLUSH_FLAGS_FILE_DATA_ONLY,
+				NULL, 0, &io_status)) {
+		errno = EINVAL;
+		return -1;
+       }
+
+       return 0;
+}