Subject: [PATCH v5 0/4] http: add support for HTTP 429 rate limit retries

From: "Vaidas Pilkauskas via GitGitGadget" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:20:01 +0000

Changes since v4:

 * fix only strbuf_attach() calls which don't need reallocation
 * remove patch, which enforces strbuf_attach() contract via BUG()

Changes since v3:

 * Clean up of all strbuf_attach() call sites

 * Add strbuf_attach() contract enforcement via BUG()

Changes since v2:

 * New preparatory patch: Introduced show_http_message_fatal() helper
   function to reduce code duplication in remote-curl.c (suggested by Taylor
   Blau)

 * Removed specific HTTP_RATE_LIMITED error handling from http-push.c and
   http-walker.c for the obsolete "dumb" protocol, allowing generic error
   handling to take over (suggested by Jeff King)

 * Added support for CURLINFO_RETRY_AFTER on curl >= 7.66.0, falling back to
   manual header parsing on older versions

 * Simplified retry/delay architecture: replaced complex non-blocking
   "delayed slot" mechanism with simple blocking sleep() call in the retry
   loop, removing ~66 lines of timing logic (suggested by Jeff King)

 * Fixed Retry-After: 0 handling to allow immediate retry as specified by
   RFC 9110

 * Changed http.retryAfter default from -1 to 0, so Git will retry
   immediately when encountering HTTP 429 without a Retry-After header,
   rather than failing with a configuration error

 * Improved error messages: shortened to be more concise

 * Fixed coding style issues: removed unnecessary curly braces, changed x ==
   0 to !x (per CodingGuidelines)

 * Improved test portability: replaced non-portable date(1) commands with
   test-tool date, added nanosecond-precision timing with getnanos, replaced
   cut(1) with POSIX shell parameter expansion

 * Split out strbuf.c bugfix into separate preparatory patch (the
   strbuf_reencode alloc size fix is unrelated to HTTP 429 support)

 * Squashed separate trace2 logging patch into main HTTP 429 retry support
   commit

 * Kept header_is_last_match assignment for Retry-After to prevent incorrect
   handling of HTTP header continuation lines

The implementation includes:

 1. A bug fix in strbuf_reencode() that corrects the allocation size passed
    to strbuf_attach(), passing len+1 instead of len so that the existing
    buffer is reused rather than immediately reallocated.

 2. A cleanup of strbuf_attach() call sites that were passing alloc == len,
    leaving no room for the NUL terminator. Sites with a
    known-NUL-terminated buffer now pass len+1; sites where the source
    buffer has no trailing NUL (ll_merge output) are converted to use
    strbuf_add() instead.

 3. A new show_http_message_fatal() helper in remote-curl.c that combines
    the repeated pattern of show_http_message() followed by die() into a
    single NORETURN function, reducing boilerplate at existing call sites
    and providing a clean hook for the retry logic.

 4. The main feature: HTTP 429 retry logic with support for the Retry-After
    header (both delay-seconds and HTTP-date formats), configurable via
    http.maxRetries, http.retryAfter, and http.maxRetryTime options. If any
    computed delay exceeds maxRetryTime the request fails immediately with a
    clear diagnostic rather than capping and retrying silently.

Vaidas Pilkauskas (4):
  strbuf: pass correct alloc to strbuf_attach() in strbuf_reencode()
  strbuf_attach: fix call sites to pass correct alloc
  remote-curl: introduce show_http_message_fatal() helper
  http: add support for HTTP 429 rate limit retries

 Documentation/config/http.adoc |  23 +++
 builtin/am.c                   |   2 +-
 builtin/fast-import.c          |   2 +-
 git-curl-compat.h              |   8 +
 http.c                         | 190 +++++++++++++++++++++--
 http.h                         |   2 +
 mailinfo.c                     |   2 +-
 refs/files-backend.c           |   2 +-
 remote-curl.c                  |  49 +++---
 strbuf.c                       |   2 +-
 t/lib-httpd.sh                 |   1 +
 t/lib-httpd/apache.conf        |   8 +
 t/lib-httpd/http-429.sh        |  98 ++++++++++++
 t/meson.build                  |   1 +
 t/t5584-http-429-retry.sh      | 266 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 trailer.c                      |   2 +-
 16 files changed, 623 insertions(+), 35 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 t/lib-httpd/http-429.sh
 create mode 100755 t/t5584-http-429-retry.sh

base-commit: 7c02d39fc2ed2702223c7674f73150d9a7e61ba4
Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-2008%2Fvaidas-shopify%2Fretry-after-v5
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-2008/vaidas-shopify/retry-after-v5
Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/2008

Range-diff vs v4:

 1:  a3386f5b56 = 1:  7ec2d66447 strbuf: pass correct alloc to strbuf_attach() in strbuf_reencode()
 2:  f48b1f07c4 ! 2:  3e0b78cfb6 strbuf_attach: fix all call sites to pass correct alloc
     @@ Metadata
      Author: Vaidas Pilkauskas <[email-masked]>
      
       ## Commit message ##
     -    strbuf_attach: fix all call sites to pass correct alloc
     +    strbuf_attach: fix call sites to pass correct alloc
      
          strbuf_attach(sb, buf, len, alloc) requires alloc > len (the buffer
          must have at least len+1 bytes to hold the NUL). Several call sites
          passed alloc == len, relying on strbuf_grow(sb, 0) inside strbuf_attach
     -    to reallocate. Prepare for changing that by fixing call sites to pass
     -    the correct alloc.
     -
     -    - mailinfo, am, refs/files-backend, fast-import, trailer: pass len+1
     -      when the buffer is a NUL-terminated string (or from strbuf_detach).
     -    - rerere, apply: ll_merge returns a buffer with exactly result.size
     -      bytes (no extra NUL). Use strbuf_add() to copy and NUL-terminate
     -      into the strbuf, then free the merge result, so alloc is correct.
     +    to reallocate. Fix these in mailinfo, am, refs/files-backend,
     +    fast-import, and trailer by passing len+1 when the buffer is a
     +    NUL-terminated string (or from strbuf_detach).
      
          Signed-off-by: Vaidas Pilkauskas <[email-masked]>
      
     - ## apply.c ##
     -@@ apply.c: static int three_way_merge(struct apply_state *state,
     - 		return -1;
     - 	}
     - 	image_clear(image);
     --	strbuf_attach(&image->buf, result.ptr, result.size, result.size);
     -+	strbuf_add(&image->buf, result.ptr, result.size);
     -+	free(result.ptr);
     - 
     - 	return status;
     - }
     -
       ## builtin/am.c ##
      @@ builtin/am.c: static void am_append_signoff(struct am_state *state)
       {
     @@ refs/files-backend.c: static int commit_ref(struct ref_lock *lock)
       		/*
       		 * If this fails, commit_lock_file() will also fail
      
     - ## rerere.c ##
     -@@ rerere.c: static int handle_cache(struct index_state *istate,
     - 	else
     - 		io.io.output = NULL;
     - 	strbuf_init(&io.input, 0);
     --	strbuf_attach(&io.input, result.ptr, result.size, result.size);
     -+	strbuf_add(&io.input, result.ptr, result.size);
     -+	free(result.ptr);
     - 
     - 	/*
     - 	 * Grab the conflict ID and optionally write the original
     -
       ## trailer.c ##
      @@ trailer.c: static struct trailer_block *trailer_block_get(const struct process_trailer_opti
       	for (ptr = trailer_lines; *ptr; ptr++) {
 3:  557fd77444 < -:  ---------- strbuf: replace strbuf_grow() in strbuf_attach() with BUG() check
 4:  3a39dc9e39 = 3:  973703e9dd remote-curl: introduce show_http_message_fatal() helper
 5:  5e0f4a56ef = 4:  bfee1f10c0 http: add support for HTTP 429 rate limit retries

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