Issues when formatting large file

[scamille]

I recently ran into a issue when formatting a large C++ file. The error message that always came up was error: unable to read file content from object database: coming from here

After investigating the issues further, I stumbled upon the python documentation for subprocess Popen.wait (https://docs.python.org/3/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.Popen.wait) which states that wait() will deadlock under certain circumstances when using pipes, which I assume happendes here.

Changing the implementation of the format_object function to the following resolved the issue for me:

# Run formatter on a git blob identified by its hash. Writes output to a new git
# blob, and returns the hash of the new blob.
def format_object(formatter, object_hash, file_path, verbose=False):
    get_content = subprocess.Popen(
            ['git', 'cat-file', '-p', object_hash],
            stdout=subprocess.PIPE
            )
    command = re.sub(file_path_placeholder, file_path, formatter)
    if verbose:
        info(command)
    format_content = subprocess.Popen(
            command,
            shell=True,
            stdin=get_content.stdout,
            stdout=subprocess.PIPE
            )
    write_object = subprocess.Popen(
            ['git', 'hash-object', '-w', '--stdin'],
            stdin=format_content.stdout,
            stdout=subprocess.PIPE
            )

    get_content.communicate()
    format_content.communicate()
    
    new_hash, err = write_object.communicate()

    if write_object.returncode != 0:
        raise Exception('unable to write formatted content to object database')

    return new_hash.decode('utf-8').rstrip()

I am not 100% sure if that solution is correct. It is mostly based on https://stackoverflow.com/a/34166541

[mgavin]

I don't know why the fix was reverted in this pull, but the code here solved my similar issue.

[hallettj]

I'm sorry, it wasn't reverted but it hasn't been merged either. That's because the fix causes tests to fail. I was working on a variation of the fix in #94 that does not break any existing functionality, but I ran into a dead end because I wasn't able to reproduce the large file problem reliably on my system.