Info files required three copies in memory to be loaded (the original string, an ini representation, and the final info object). Not only was this memory inefficient but the Ini object does sequential scans when searching for keys making large files very slow to load.
This has not been an issue since archive.info and backup.info are very small, but it becomes a big deal when loading manifests with hundreds of thousands of files.
Instead of holding copies of the data in memory, use a callback to deliver the ini data directly to the object when loading. Use a similar method for save to avoid having an intermediate copy. Save is a bit complex because sections/keys must be written in alpha order or older versions of pgBackRest will not calculate the correct checksum.
Also move the load retry logic to helper functions rather than embedding it in the Info object. This allows for more flexibility in loading and ensures that stack traces will be available when developing unit tests.
Reviewed by Cynthia Shang.
Putting the checksum at the beginning of the file made it impossible to stream the file out when saving. The entire file had to be held in memory while it was checksummed so the checksum could be written at the beginning.
Instead place the checksum at the end. This does not break the existing Perl or C code since the read is not order dependent.
There are no plans to improve the Perl code to take advantage of this change, but it will make the C implementation more efficient.
Reviewed by Cynthia Shang.
