Slow execution with needs lock property

Hi,

In a repository that contains a large number of files and folders (over 100K),
many of which have the needs-lock property set, If any user attempts to check
out this entire repository, the large number of locks created on the server
render the server almost unusable due to high load and cause the 'svn ls --xml'
command to fail.

I ve attached a test script which will create the environment to reproduce this
problem.

Some of the tests I did with different versions of subversion for the above
problem revealed that there is something wrong with svn 1.6.x versions of
subversion.

Following are my findings,

With svn 1.6.9, in the working copy,
<snip>
$ time /usr/sbin/svn ls . > /tmp/ls.txt

real 0m5.745s
user 0m4.281s
sys 0m1.653s

$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
test99990.txt
test99991.txt
test99992.txt
test99993.txt
test99994.txt
test99995.txt
test99996.txt
test99997.txt
test99998.txt
test99999.txt

$ time /usr/sbin/svn ls --xml . > /tmp/ls.txt
### Waits infinitely with no meaningful output ###
</snip>

With svn 1.4.2, in the working copy,
<snip>
$ time svn ls . > /tmp/ls.txt

real 0m2.866s
user 0m1.890s
sys 0m0.681s

$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
<no output>

$ time svn ls --xml . > /tmp/ls.txt

real 0m3.047s
user 0m1.842s
sys 0m0.680s

$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<lists>
<list
    path=".">
</list>
</lists>
</snip>

With svn 1.6.9, in the repository,
<snip>
$ time /usr/sbin/svn ls file:///tmp/repos > /tmp/ls.txt

real 0m4.656s
user 0m1.686s
sys 0m1.470s

$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
test99990.txt
test99991.txt
test99992.txt
test99993.txt
test99994.txt
test99995.txt
test99996.txt
test99997.txt
test99998.txt
test99999.txt

$ time /usr/sbin/svn ls --xml file:///tmp/repos > /tmp/ls.txt

real 160m44.583s
user 113m42.129s
sys 2m7.358s

$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
<name>test99999.txt</name>
<size>0</size>
<commit
    revision="1">
<author>root</author>
<date>2010-07-11T15:09:10.029363Z</date>
</commit>
</entry>
</list>
</lists>

######## Top stats as follows ################
29657 ssenthil 25 0 565m 418m 2896 R 36.6 20.8 23:33.42 svn

30838 ssenthil 25 0 217m 70m 2840 R 38.3 3.5 3:17.07 svn

</snip>

With svn 1.4.2, in the repository,
<snip>
$ time svn ls file:///tmp/repos > /tmp/ls.txt

real 0m2.849s
user 0m1.429s
sys 0m0.177s
[ssenthil_at_cu041 tmp]$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
test99990.txt
test99991.txt
test99992.txt
test99993.txt
test99994.txt
test99995.txt
test99996.txt
test99997.txt
test99998.txt
test99999.txt

$ time svn ls --xml file:///tmp/repos > /tmp/ls.txt

real 0m27.708s
user 0m17.528s
sys 0m7.224s

$ tail /tmp/ls.txt
<name>test99999.txt</name>
<size>0</size>
<commit
    revision="1">
<author>ssenthil</author>
<date>2010-07-03T03:48:04.471139Z</date>
</commit>
</entry>
</list>
</lists>
</snip>

Looking at the numbers furnished above, it is clear that subversion does real
work of getting the directory listing in plain and in xml format without any
issues. But the real problem is the time taken to generate output for '--xml',
not to mention 1.4.2 version is faster than 1.6.9 in this aspect.

Am looking at the cause of this behavior, meanwhile would like to post it here
to find out if it rings some bell for someone :)

Thank You.

-- 
Senthil Kumaran S
http://www.stylesen.org/