The previous algorithm used a map of all visited pointers.
The strength of this approach is that it quickly prunes any nodes
that we have ever visited before. The detriment of the approach
is that pruning is heavily dependent on the order that pointers
were visited. This is especially relevant for hashing a map
where map entries are visited in a non-deterministic manner,
which would cause the map hash to be non-deterministic
(which defeats the point of a hash).
This new algorithm uses a stack of all visited pointers,
similar to how github.com/google/go-cmp performs cycle detection.
When we visit a pointer, we push it onto the stack, and when
we leave a pointer, we pop it from the stack.
Before visiting a pointer, we first check whether the pointer exists
anywhere in the stack. If yes, then we prune the node.
The detriment of this approach is that we may hash a node more often
than before since we do not prune as aggressively.
The set of visited pointers up until any node is only the
path of nodes up to that node and not any other pointers
that may have been visited elsewhere. This provides us
deterministic hashing regardless of visit order.
We can now delete hashMapFallback and associated complexity,
which only exists because the previous approach was non-deterministic
in the presence of cycles.
This fixes a failure of the old algorithm where obviously different
values are treated as equal because the pruning was too aggresive.
See https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/2443#issuecomment-883653534
The new algorithm is slightly slower since it prunes less aggresively:
name old time/op new time/op delta
Hash-8 66.1µs ± 1% 68.8µs ± 1% +4.09% (p=0.000 n=19+19)
HashMapAcyclic-8 63.0µs ± 1% 62.5µs ± 1% -0.76% (p=0.000 n=18+19)
TailcfgNode-8 9.79µs ± 2% 9.88µs ± 1% +0.95% (p=0.000 n=19+17)
HashArray-8 643ns ± 1% 653ns ± 1% +1.64% (p=0.000 n=19+19)
However, a slower but more correct algorithm seems
more favorable than a faster but incorrect algorithm.
Signed-off-by: Joe Tsai <joetsai@digital-static.net>
A Go interface may hold any number of different concrete types.
Just because two underlying values hash to the same thing
does not mean the two values are identical if they have different
concrete types. As such, include the type in the hash.
Seed the hash upon first use with the current time.
This ensures that the stability of the hash is bounded within
the lifetime of one program execution.
Hopefully, this prevents future bugs where someone assumes that
this hash is stable.
Signed-off-by: Joe Tsai <joetsai@digital-static.net>
The fact that Hash returns a [sha256.Size]byte leaks details about
the underlying hash implementation. This could very well be any other
hashing algorithm with a possible different block size.
Abstract this implementation detail away by declaring an opaque type
that is comparable. While we are changing the signature of UpdateHash,
rename it to just Update to reduce stutter (e.g., deephash.Update).
Signed-off-by: Joe Tsai <joetsai@digital-static.net>
