[PATCH 0/2] Simplify "commented" API functions

We [earlier] noticed that a few helper functions that format strings into a strbuf, prefixed with an arbitrary comment leading character, are forcing their callers to always pass the same argument. Instead of keeping this excess flexibility nobody wants in practice, narrow the API so that all callers of these functions will get the same comment leading character.

Superficially it may appear that this goes against one of the recent trend, "war on global variables", but I doubt it matters much in the longer run.

These call sites all have already been relying on the global "comment_line_str" anyway, and passing the variable from the top of arbitrary deep call chain, which may not care specifically about this single variable comment_line_str, would not scale as a solution. If we were to make it a convention to pass something from the very top of the call chain everywhere, it should not be an individual variable that is overly specific, like comment_line_str. Rather, it has to be something that allows access to a bag of all the global settings (possibly wider than "the_repository" struct). We can also limit our reliance to the globals by allowing a single global function call to obtaion such a bag of all global settings, i.e. "get_the_environment()", and allow everybody, including functions at the leaf level, to ask "what is the comment_line_str in the environment I am working in?". As part of the libification, we can plug in an appropriate shim for get_the_environment().

[earlier] https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqq7cn4g3nx.fsf@gitster.g/

Junio C Hamano (2):
  strbuf: retire strbuf_commented_addf()
  strbuf: retire strbuf_commented_lines()

 add-patch.c          |  8 ++++----
 builtin/branch.c     |  2 +-
 builtin/merge.c      |  8 ++++----
 builtin/notes.c      | 10 +++++-----
 builtin/stripspace.c |  2 +-
 builtin/tag.c        |  4 ++--
 fmt-merge-msg.c      | 17 +++++++----------
 rebase-interactive.c |  8 ++++----
 sequencer.c          | 16 +++++++---------
 strbuf.c             | 11 +++++------
 strbuf.h             | 13 +++++--------
 wt-status.c          |  6 +++---
 12 files changed, 48 insertions(+), 57 deletions(-)