The new macro might be a bit too restrictive.
Systems which do not support new test will simply default to <time.h>'s `clock_t clock()`,
suffering lesser benchmark accuracy.
Should it matter, the detection macro will have to be upgraded.
There was a flaw in the formula
which compared literal cost with match cost :
at a given position,
a non-null literal suite is going to be part of next sequence,
while if position ends a previous match, to immediately start another match,
next sequence will have a litlength of zero.
A litlength of zero has a non-null cost.
It follows that literals cost should be compared to match cost + litlength==0.
Not doing so gave a structural advantage to matches, which would be selected more often.
I believe that's what led to the creation of the strange heuristic which added a complex cost to matches.
The heuristic was actually compensating.
It was probably created through multiple trials, settling for best outcome on a given scenario (I suspect silesia.tar).
The problem with this heuristic is that it's hard to understand,
and unfortunately, any future change in the parser would impact the way it should be calculated and its effects.
The "proper" formula makes it possible to remove this heuristic.
Now, the problem is : in a head to head comparison, it's sometimes better, sometimes worse.
Note that all differences are small (< 0.01 ratio).
In general, the newer formula is better for smaller files (for example, calgary.tar and enwik7).
I suspect that's because starting statistics are pretty poor (another area of improvement).
However, for silesia.tar specifically, it's worse at level 22 (while being better at level 17, so even compression level has an impact ...).
It's a pity that zstd -22 gets worse on silesia.tar.
That being said, I like that the new code gets rid of strange variables,
which were introducing complexity for any future evolution (faster variants being in mind).
Therefore, in spite of this detrimental side effect, I tend to be in favor of it.
Fixes issue where, when `zstd --format=lz4` is fed an input larger than 128KB,
the read overruns the input buffer. This changes Zstd to use LZ4 with chained
64KB blocks. This is technically a breaking change in that some third party
LZ4 implementations may not support linked blocks. However, progress should not
be allowed to be stopped by such petty concerns as backwards compatibility!
adapt accuracy depending on value.
makes it possible to have higher accuracy for small value,
notably small compression speed.
This capability is expected to be useful while modifying optimal parser.
Currently, all files are joined by default,
they are compressed separately but benchmarked together,
providing a single final result.
Benchmarking files separately make it possible to accurately measure difference for each file.
This is expected to be useful while tuning optimal parser.
this version has same speed as branch `opt`
which is itself 5-10% slower than branch `dev`
(no identified reason)
It does not compress exactly the same as `opt` or `dev`,
maybe because it doesn't stop search after repcodes,
leading to sometimes better compression, sometimes worse
(by a small margin).
warning : _extDict path does not work for the time being
This means that benchmark module works,
but file module will fail with large files (and high compression level).
Objective is to fuse _extDict path into current one,
in order to have a single parser to maintain.
as per documentation, on ZSTD_setPledgedSrcSize() :
> If all data is provided and consumed in a single round,
> this value (pledgedSrcSize) is overriden by srcSize instead.
This wasn't applied before compression level is transformed into compression parameters.
As a consequence, small input missed compression parameters adaptation.
It seems to work fine now : compression was compared with ZSTD_compress_advanced(),
results were the same.
we lose a warning message :
when a job size is chosen < minimum job size for multithreading,
it is automatically resized to minimum size.
If this information is really useful, it should be present in zstd.h now.
removed the other 2 code paths (single thread, and ZSTDMT ones)
keeping only the new advanced API, for easier code coverage.
It shall also fix identified issue with Visual Studio
which doesn't have ZSTD_NEWAPI defined.
UTIL_getFileSize() used to return zero on failure.
This made it impossible to distinguish a failure from a genuine empty file.
Both cases where coalesced.
Adding UTIL_FILESIZE_UNKNOWN constant has many consequences on user code,
since in many places, the `0` was assumed to mean "error".
This is no longer the case, and the error code must be actively checked.
It was multiple reasons stacked :
- Visual use a different code path, because ZSTD_NEWAPI is not defined
- fileio.c sends `0` as `pledgedSrcSize` to mean `ZSTD_CONTENTSIZE_UNKNOWN` (fixed)
- ZSTDMT_resetCCtx() interpreted `0` as "empty" instead of "unknown" (fixed)
when determining compression parameters
to compress one file only.
For multiple files, it still "bets" that files are going to be small.
There was also a bug recently added in ZSTD_CCtx_loadDictionary_advanced()
making it incapable to use pledgedSrcSize to determine compression parameters.
It's not good to mix old and new API
ZSTD_resetCStream() doesn't just set pledgedSrcSize :
it also sets the CCtx for a single thread compression.
Problem is, when 2+ threads are defined in cctx->requestedParams,
ZSTD_compress_generic() will want to start MT compression,
since initialization is supposed to have already happened (thanks to ZSTD_resetCStream())
except that the underlying ZSTDMT_CCtx* object is not created,
resulting in a segfault.
This is an invalid construction
(correct one is to use ZSTD_CCtx_setPledgedSrcSize()).
I haven't found a nice way to mitigate this impact if someone makes the same mistake.
At some point, removing the old API to keep only the new API within fileio.c will limit these risks.
srcSize is read and provided at each file, not at resource creation.
This used to be useful with older API, because it could not re-adapt parameters between sessions.
At some point, it will be better to remove the old code, and only keep the new_api.
It works fine by now.
