This commit teaches the "changesetdata" wire protocol command
to emit the phase state for each changeset.
This is a different approach from existing phase transfer in a
few ways. Previously, if there are no new revisions (or we're
not using bundle2), we perform a "listkeys" request to retrieve
phase heads. And when revision data is being transferred
with bundle2, phases data is encoded in a standalone bundle2 part.
In both cases, phases data is logically decoupled from the changeset
data and is encountered/applied after changeset revision data
is received.
The new wire protocol purposefully tries to more tightly associate
changeset metadata (phases, bookmarks, obsolescence markers, etc)
with the changeset revision and index data itself, rather than
have it live as a separate entity that must be fetched and
processed separately. I reckon that one reason we didn't do this
before was it was difficult to add new data types/fields without
breaking existing consumers. By using CBOR maps to transfer
changeset data and putting clients in control of what fields are
requested / present in those maps, we can easily add additional
changeset data while maintaining backwards compatibility. I believe
this to be a superior approach to the problem.
That being said, for performance reasons, we may need to resort
to alternative mechanisms for transferring data like phases. But
for now, I think giving the wire protocol the ability to transfer
changeset metadata next to the changeset itself is a powerful feature
because it is a raw, changeset-centric data API. And if you build
simple APIs for accessing the fundamental units of repository data,
you enable client-side experimentation (partial clone, etc). If it
turns out that we need specialized APIs or mechanisms for transferring
data like phases, we can build in those APIs later. For now, I'd
like to see how far we can get on simple APIs.
It's worth noting that when phase data is being requested, the
server will also emit changeset records for nodes in the bases
specified by the "noderange" argument. This is to ensure that
phase-only updates for nodes the client has are available to the
client, even if no new changesets will be transferred.
Won't it be better to use phase numbers here because that's how we represent phases at most of the places. If you agree, I can send a followup for that.