Re: [PATCH 2/3] merge-recursive: untangle double meaning of o->call_depth

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 7, 2013, 18:37 UTC
Message-ID: <7v1u7a43or.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <7e823a9faedf1980912628c3a3f083e26fb0c650.1373219466.git.trast@inf.ethz.ch>

Thomas Rast <trast@inf.ethz.ch> writes:

> o->call_depth has a double function: a nonzero call_depth means we
> want to construct virtual merge bases, but it also means we want to
> avoid touching the worktree.  Introduce a new flag o->no_worktree for
> the latter.

I do remember discussing this with you the other day, and while I do agree that we may not want to touch the working tree in the outermost merge (i.e. o->call_depth is zero) in some applications, I do not think of a situation where you _do_ want to touch working tree while performing the inner merge. I'd feel safer if the code said that "no matter what no-worktree option says, we won't touch the working tree if o->call_depth is not zero" clearly in some way, e.g.

	if (o->call_depth || o->in_index_merge)
        	return; /* leave without touching working tree */

In other words, I do not like the part of the code that pretends these two are independent options, when what we really want is to have two modes for the outermost (o->call_depth == 0) case.