Rewriting the full nodemap for each transaction has a cost we would like to
avoid. We introduce a new way to write persistent nodemap data by adding new
information at the end for file. Any new and updated block as added at the end
of the file. The last block is the new root node.
With this method, some of the block already on disk get "dereferenced" and
become dead data. In later changesets, We'll start tracking the amount of dead
data to eventually re-generate a full nodemap.
Which patch introduced the C code? I have not looked at all patches yet, but I thought the idea was that this entire stack was just pure Python and then you'd add a Rust version (not C) in a separate series.