I have spotted the biggest bottleneck in "bdiff.c". Actually it was
pretty easy to find after I recompiled the python interpreter and
mercurial for profiling.
In "bdiff.c" function "equatelines" allocates the minimum hash table
size, which can lead to tons of collisions. I introduced an
"overcommit" factor of 16, this is, I allocate 16 times more memory
than the minimum value. Overcommiting 128 times does not improve the
performance over the 16-times case.
To run the tests, do:
cd tests/
python run-tests.py
See http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/WritingTests for
more information on writing tests.