#pragma section-numbers 2
= GeneralDelta =
Using the generaldelta compression option.

<<TableOfContents>>

== Introduction ==
The original Mercurial compression format has a particular weakness in storing and transmitting deltas for branches that are heavily interleaved. In some instances, this can make the size of the manifest data (stored in '''00manifest.d''') balloon by 10x or more. The generaldelta option is an effort to mitigate that, while still maintaining Mercurial's O(1)-bounded performance.

The generaldelta feature is available in Mercurial 1.9 and later.

== Enabling generaldelta ==
The generaldelta feature is enabled by default in Mercurial 3.7


For older release can be enabled for new clones with:

{{{
[format]
generaldelta = true
}}}
This will actually enable three features:

 * generaldelta storage
 * recomputation of delta on pull (to be stored as "optimised" general delta)
 * delta reordering on pulls when this is enabled on the server side

The latter feature will let clients without generaldelta enabled experience some of the disk space and bandwidth benefits.

== Converting a repo to generaldelta ==
This is as simple as:

{{{
$ hg clone -U --config format.generaldelta=1 --pull project project-generaldelta
}}}
The aforementioned reordering can also marginally improve compression for generaldelta clients, which can be tried with a second pass:

{{{
$ hg clone -U --config format.generaldelta=1 --pull project-generaldelta project-generaldelta-pass2
}}}
Detailed compression statistics for the manifest can be checked with '''debugrevlog''':

{{{
$ hg debugrevlog -m
format : 1
flags  : generaldelta

revisions     :   14932
    merges    :    1763 (11.81%)
    normal    :   13169 (88.19%)
revisions     :   14932
    full      :      61 ( 0.41%)
    deltas    :   14871 (99.59%)
revision size : 3197528
    full      :  744577 (23.29%)
    deltas    : 2452951 (76.71%)

avg chain length  : 172
compression ratio : 229

uncompressed data size (min/max/avg) : 125 / 80917 / 49156
full revision size (min/max/avg)     : 113 / 37284 / 12206
delta size (min/max/avg)             : 0 / 27029 / 164

deltas against prev  : 13770 (92.60%)
    where prev = p1  : 13707     (99.54%)
    where prev = p2  :     8     ( 0.06%)
    other            :    55     ( 0.40%)
deltas against p1    :  1097 ( 7.38%)
deltas against p2    :     4 ( 0.03%)
deltas against other :     0 ( 0.00%)
}}}
Of particular interest are the number of full revisions and the average delta size.

== Further work ==

Mercurial

 * (./) Support for exchanging general delta over the wire (Mercurial 3.5 and above),
 * (./) Support for storing general delta changegroup on disk (Mercurial 3.6 and above),
 * (./) Support for pulling from an old server without triggering a recomputation of all delta ((future) Mercurial 3.7 and above),
 * {X} Client side warning when the exchange is sub-optimal,
 * {X} gathering data about the general delta efficiency and re-computation cost,
 * {X} provide user with a way to do on site upgrade,
 * {X} switch in core to disallow non bundle2 pull/push.

== See also ==
 * ParentDeltaPlan
 * ManifestCompressionPlan
 * [[http://selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial/2011-July/039204.html|Call for testing: generaldelta]]

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## list categories here
CategoryInternals CategoryOldFeatures