Re: [PATCH/RFC v3 0/4] Improving performance of git clean

> Erik Elfström <erik.elfstrom@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Known Problems:
>> * Unsure about the setup.c:read_gitfile refactor, feels a bit
>>   messy?
>
> The interface indeed feels somewhat messy.  I suspect that a better
> interface might be more like setup_git_directory_gently() that is a
> gentler version of setup_git_directory().  The function takes an
> optional pointer to an int, and it behaves not-gently-at-all when
> the optional argument is NULL.  The location the optional pointer
> points at, when it is not NULL, can be used to return the error
> state to the caller.  That function pair only uses the optional
> argument to convey one bit of information (i.e. "are we in any git
> repository or not?") back to the caller, but the interface could be
> used to tell the caller a lot more if we wanted to.
>
> If you model read_gitfile_gently() after that pattern, I would
> expect that
>
>  - The extra pattern would be "int *error";
>  - The implementation of read_gitfile() would be
>
>        #define read_gitfile(path) read_gitfile_gently((path), NULL)
>
>    and the _gently() version will die when "error" parameter is set
>    to NULL and finds any error.
>
>  - The caller of the gentle variant can use the error code to
>    determine what went wrong, not just the fact that it failed.  I
>    do not think your caller does not have an immediate need to tell
>    between "invalid gitfile format" and "No path in gitfile", but
>    such an interface leaves that possibility open.
>
> Thanks.
>