Re: [PATCH v7] describe: refresh the index when 'broken' flag is used

From: Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 2, 2024, 10:13 UTC
Message-ID: <CAOLa=ZR-g4G0FaxnQjjkOST-zeRxBXXK1gpJ=P3xdbi_9eN_rg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqle2lvsmz.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> This explains for why 'broken' must use a subprocess, but there is
>> nothing stopping 'dirty' from also using a subprocess, right? It
>> currently uses an in-process index refresh but it _could_ be a
>> subprocess too.
>
> Correct, except that it does not make sense to do any and all things
> that you _could_ do.  So...

Well, In this context, I think there is some merit though. There are two blocks of code `--broken` and `--dirty` one after the other which both need to refresh the index. With this patch, 'broken' will use a child process to do so while 'dirty' will use `refresh_index(...)`. To someone reading the code it would seem a bit confusing. I agree there is no merit in using a child process in 'dirty' by itself. But I also think we should leave a comment there for readers to understand the distinction.