Timeline

The tree shape minted permanent SUBMANIFEST artifacts for benefits already had elsewhere: the rebuild win lives in the prefix record, verify's §6.2 oracle runs buildTree in memory, and the subtree-sharing bytes re-materialize at the first real S-emitting commit at identical cost. Minting early only created unreferenced permanent artifacts and the allow-tree/demotion/gate apparatus needed to keep automation from doing it by accident — all deleted with it. build no longer opens the log for writing or reads the emission settings at all; sidecar layout v3 (old sidecars miss and rebuild in seconds). Proven at scale: SHA-256 of pkgsrc's 593MB store is byte-identical across a full build; cold 4:12, rebuild 3.4s. check-in: 2a8fdcff60 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Build paid a bypass derive, a whole-prefix delta scan, and a capture re-derive; a view-free captureRecords (byte-identical to the deriving walk, pinned at every boundary) now does capture and delta detection in one pass, and an existing sidecar's body plus its delta-free attestation reduce a rebuild to the unscanned tail. pkgsrc: cold build 17:58 -> 4:21; rebuild or anchor advance -> 5.1s.

Repository.open's healing paths keep an existing checkpoint fresh: witness shape forced (the automatic path can never mint an artifact, whatever §8.1 says — a tree pin advances by demotion and is re-pinned deliberately), gated on 4MB growth AND anchor progress so blob-only growth never churns the sidecar. No checkpoint, no auto-creation: building once is the opt-in. check-in: adae602908 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

An unlimited timeline re-read and re-parsed every manifest just to print its comment first-line — 163k inflate+parse cycles on pkgsrc. The comment now rides the crosslink record into the derived state (commentOf; image backing falls back to the manifest read), so the render loop is a lookup per row: full timeline 12.3s -> 1.06s. Record-format consumers bumped so old bodies miss instead of misparsing (repocache v3, checkpoint v2 — one re-derive per repo, then warm). zit log's pinned B-log-1 walk untouched. check-in: 57d8de4120 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

The lazy content channel re-walked every frame header on each open — O(store) before the first byte of any comment, cat, or annotate. The scan's product (entries, hash index, shun rows, config cursor, tail key) now persists as .zit-cache/index, self-validating and LogKey-keyed: an exact tail adopts whole, a grown log resumes the walk over the tail alone, and anything else falls back to the authoritative scan (--no-cache never consults it). pkgsrc: info 1.7s -> 0.44s, timeline -n 5 4.3s -> 0.96s. check-in: f2bfd36e74 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Replace the pick-the-minimum-stamp linear scan with an intrusive doubly linked recency list; get/put/evict are all constant-time. The scan was invisible at small occupancy and dominant at full: a pkgsrc clone kept the cache pinned at max_entries and spent over half its client CPU sweeping the map once per stored artifact. Measured: clone 12:38 -> 8:39 wall, client CPU 694s -> 463s; cloned store verifies with 0 faults. check-in: 0df83f350a user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Seven files relocate with unchanged basenames: git_fast_export(+test), git_import, git_import_impl, git_import_cli, git_import_verify, git_import_benchmark_support. The six standalone module roots (test, refs_test, cli_test, e2e, benchmark, pipe_helper) stay flat because a Zig module cannot import above its root file's directory — the same rule that keeps main/e2e/dst/smoke at src/. Future export-git files follow the same split: roots flat, implementation in src/git/. Path-string edits only; build.zig unchanged. check-in: ce3c87e25c user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

.zit-cache/checkpoint pairs a validated log-prefix key with the prefix's crosslink record body; Repository.open resumes past the flat segment on a cache miss instead of re-parsing it. Witness shape under a closed emission gate creates zero artifacts; tree shape pins the anchor's file set as the canonical S-tree (batch-oracle byte-identical, one interior root node). verify re-derives every claim from real history; --no-cache bypasses both sidecars. New verb: zit checkpoint [show|build|verify|drop].

pkgsrc (163k commits, 60k files): cold open 8.4s vs 352s full derive; verify passes; 366/367 tree nodes deduplicated against the imported tree. check-in: e4026acd7b user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

The policy is three names and a prefix: .zit, .zit-checkout, .zit-cache, .zit-tmp-*. Removed: the absorbed sibling reservations (.zit-managed/-undo/ -bisect), the pre-directory cache/vstat spellings and their read tolerance, the retired scratch spellings, and the import-provenance names (refs, .zit-import-map.jsonl).

Behavior shift: in never-re-opened old checkouts these leftovers are now visible to extras and deletable by clean. The container's byte-1 fold stays, so a legacy authoritative sibling still migrates losslessly on first contact (e2e: every-leftover checkout converges to the clean root with membership intact). check-in: c0a116d458 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Sectioned container (ZITCKOT, tagged table, whole-file CRC); payloads are the existing formats unchanged. Byte-1 dispatch migrates legacy checkouts on first write; siblings dead once a container exists. Undo/redo restore and the commit/merge record+membership writes each collapse to one atomic splice. DST gains a legacy-seeded migration sweep (full-legacy or full-container at every crash cut). Registry: the three names move to the legacy tier. Perf on pkgsrc: adjacent update 6.50s (was 6.8), no-op 5.14s (was 7.69); migration of a 66k-file checkout invisible inside one update. check-in: efa29d234f user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Tasks 1-5 of the control-file consolidation plan. The checkout root goes from twelve zit-owned names to six live ones; the authoritative-tier container (task 6) and legacy removal (task 7) are deliberately not in this change.

Registry: control_paths now carries every reserved root name with its tier -- authoritative, advisory, scratch, legacy -- and is the single authority the case table, the extras exclusions and the ignore-glob coverage pin all derive from or test against. A name added without its glob line or case coverage is a test failure, proven by mutation. The pin caught two live gaps on arrival: a crashed update's transaction directory had no ignore-glob line, and a crashed import's staging directory was never reserved at all.

import-git --provenance: the per-object map and the source ref manifest are now instrumentation, published only on request. The default destination is the repository and its checkout record -- fossil's own shape. Both files are still written and verified in staging every run; without the flag they leave with the raw generation, and the staging manifest check enforces whichever set was chosen.

Scratch: one prefix. .zit-tmp-txn- (update transactions), .zit-tmp-import- (import staging), .zit-tmp-pack (pack scratch; name only, the truncate-reuse and rewrite-exclusion lock protocol are untouched). One registry prefix row and one glob line cover the tier including names that do not exist yet.

Advisory: .zit-cache is a directory -- repo (derived-state cache) and vstat (materialization plan), with the tree-checkpoint's member reserved. A legacy cache FILE is served through a read fallback and migrated by the first write via rename through a scratch name: the derivation survives with no bytes copied and no re-derive. Verified on a 66k-file pkgsrc checkout: identical SHA-256 across migration of a 35.8MB cache, fallback reads at parity, no-op update 7.69s vs 7.74s.

Legacy spellings of every renamed or relocated name stay reserved and ignore-globbed until the removal release. check-in: f1ac625093 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Three fixes, each found by measuring the previous one's residue.

markUnchanged: a path byte-identical between baseline and target -- same digest, same mode, with requireClean having already proven the on-disk file matches -- is skipped by every mutation phase: staging both directions, the undo journal, deletion and rewrite. An update used to delete and rewrite the entire tree regardless of how little changed.

.zit-vstat: the stat sidecar written at materialization is now the BASELINE PLAN -- version-bound, CRC'd, carrying mode and plan order -- so requireClean rebuilds the baseline with zero tree flattens when it describes the current check-in, and proves most files clean by inode/size/mtime instead of reconstructing their content out of the log. Advisory throughout: any mismatch, staleness or corruption falls back to the flatten and the content compare, which stay authoritative.

ManagedSet.fromSortedPaths: building the 66k-entry managed set through insert was quadratic -- an O(n) sorted-position memmove plus the LIVE sortedUnique assert per call -- and measured at 23.9 SECONDS of a pkgsrc update, larger than every real phase combined. The plan's own order is already sorted and unique, so the set is now built in one pass, order enforced per adjacent pair, invariant asserted once.

Measured, same store and targets as #52's gate: sqlite (2.2k files): 117.8s flat -> 0.6s adjacent / 1.2s distant pkgsrc (66k files): 42.2s flat -> 6.8s adjacent / 8.9s distant pkgsrc user CPU: ~25s -> 1.3s Residue is stat I/O (two ~66k-file sweeps), not computation.

The lockstep flatten prune #52 proposed was never built: the flatten measured 178ms at 66k files once the real costs fell.

Tests: dirty AND delete of a skipped-diff file both refuse with the tree untouched; sidecar intact/absent/rebound-to-wrong-check-in all produce identical trees; an unchanged file provably keeps its inode; an updated tree equals a from-scratch materialization. Closes #52. check-in: 8797f53546 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

The derived-state cache was all-or-nothing: any log append was a total miss, and the next read re-derived the whole store. On a real 1M-artifact pkgsrc store that was 352s per cold read, re-paid after every commit.

Repository.open's miss path now distinguishes growth from rewrite. On growth it replays the cached record body (parse-free), folds only the tail frames through the same crosslink fold a cold derive uses, and rewrites the cache: every append healed by the next read at O(tail). Measured on pkgsrc: 352.31s cold, 2.40s after a commit, output byte-identical to a forced full re-derive.

Sound because extension refuses whenever the fold could be wrong rather than stale: validatePrefix proves the old tail frame still verifies at its offset (a rewritten log cannot extend), and a shun fingerprint in the cache header forces the full derive on any shun-table change, since the body was distilled under the old mask. Cache format v2; a v1 cache misses once and rebuilds.

import-git now warms the cache at completion, after the atomic rename, against the published store -- clone has done this since warmCacheFromLog existed, so an import-built store no longer defers the whole derive onto its first reader.

Tests: extension equals cold derive with a fork and control tag in the tail; a forged-cache canary proving the fold starts from the stored body; shun change takes the full derive with the mask applied.

Also backs out 1a4b74f2d5 (parallel staging): measured ~3% on a corpus where staging is ~5s of 149s -- threading complexity the number never justified. Closes #51. check-in: 84d3fe8f32 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Staging reconstructs and writes every file in a plan -- one decompress, delta-chain application and hash verification each -- and on a wide repository that is tens of thousands of files for a single open or update. The work is per-file independent, and the store's read path is offset-addressed pread over an index immutable for the duration, so it parallelises without coordination.

The one thing that cannot be written concurrently is last_stage_fault, a module global. Workers keep their own and the winner is chosen by ENTRY INDEX, which is exactly the fault sequential order would have raised, so this is observationally identical to the loop it replaces including which failure gets reported. Below 64 entries it stays sequential, and a thread that fails to spawn is not an error -- its share drains off the same cursor.

Measured 2:33.5 to 2:28.8 on a 299 MB sqlite store, about 3%, with CPU never leaving 101%. So staging is NOT the dominant term there: the flatten's per-node reconstruction is, which this does not touch. Committed so it can be measured at pkgsrc scale, where the file count is 27x higher and the size distribution is different. If it does not move that number either, revert it -- it buys complexity for 3%. check-in: 1a4b74f2d5 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

A POLICY CHANGE, not a bug fix. Gates 5 to 7 prove the mirror's manifest is byte-reproducible from the check-in this import builds. Flat mode claims that; sub-manifest mode restructures the file set behind S cards, so its check-in is a different artifact by construction and claims nothing of the kind. Refusing to release the metadata because a mode failed to reproduce something it never promised is a category error.

What makes the drop safe is gate 3 -- the bytes hash to the name a sibling manifest.uuid records, which a project file merely called 'manifest' cannot satisfy. That gate is untouched and still catches the look-alike. Gate 8 still guards the tags member. The B-card and S-card shape checks move with gates 5 to 7: a delta manifest is a real check-in, and refusing it only ever mattered because gate 5 needs a complete F run to compare against.

On a sound source the win is small: bench measures 180 retained on sqlite, and this takes that to about 1. The win is on sources holding shunned or phantom content, where the origin's manifests name bytes the origin no longer has and no export can reproduce them -- permanent stranding today. libfossil goes from 293 of 3819 commits validated to 3817, and its store from 35.0 MB to 30.2 MB.

Costs, stated rather than discovered later: this retires the only signal that a source repository is incomplete, and it leaves mirrorTreeMatches's tree arm unreachable from classification, annotated in place with the condition for deleting it. check-in: 063a66e4c5 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

Fossil's git export derives the git commit time by truncating a floating-point Julian Day, so a whole-second origin timestamp lands a second early about half the time. Minting from commit.committer meant zit built those check-ins at a provably different instant than the origin, their manifests were never redundant, and their mirror metadata was kept forever: 4533 of 36383 commits on a real sqlite mirror.

Where gate 3 has proved a mirror manifest authentic and gate 4 parsed it, the D card is now that manifest's own. Per commit, only where the proof succeeded -- an unproven mirror is never trusted. On the sqlite corpus timestamp_mismatch goes 4533 to 0 and the sha1-named era drops 18373 of 18392.

Not under an explicit --attribution author: that flag asks for the author's instants, and adopting the origin's would leave it doing nothing on most commits while still appearing set. Those imports drop nothing, stated rather than silent.

Gate 7 also compared against the committer unconditionally while minting the attributed identity, so under --attribution author it could drop a manifest on a proof about a check-in that was never built. It now compares against the instant actually minted. check-in: 7495b2e141 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

A tracked file can be a complete check-in manifest -- a vendored fossil source tarball is the ordinary route, since fossil stopped sterilizing archive exports in 2.18. The import stores it verbatim rather than mutating it the way fossil's own git import does: the file the user committed should be the file we store, and open already refuses to materialize a check-in whose content is absent. But the operator should hear it at import, not at the first open, so such blobs are counted and reported. Two bytes reject ordinary content before anything is parsed.

The --manifest e2e now pins the marker's POSITION, not just its presence: it follows the final card and is not line 1. A refactor moving it to line 1 would still sterilize and would still pass every previous assertion, while silently diverging from fossil and breaking the mirror strip.

Errata for artifact-format 4.1.2 filed separately; the draft states the wrong position, the wrong rejection gate, and a literal no fossil code path emits. check-in: 12ce319d18 user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest

sterilize_manifest() appends its marker after the last card. On an ordinary manifest that is the end of the blob, but on a PGP-clearsigned one the cards are followed by the signature block and the marker lands immediately before it. The strip only handled the trailing case, so a signed check-in's mirror bytes never hashed to the origin's recorded name, the pair proof refused it, and its manifest/manifest.uuid/ manifest.tags were retained permanently.

On a real sqlite mirror that is 1076 check-ins, all 2009-2011. With the splice every one of the corpus's 36383 commits proves: 35307 by the trailing strip, 1076 only by this.

Deliberately narrow -- only the two positions fossil writes. A marker anywhere else is still left alone, so a blob that merely contains the line is not reshaped into one that proves. check-in: a161ee719a user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest