Re: [GSOC PATCH v6 0/3] environment: remove sparse-checkout related global variables

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 24, 2025, 18:44 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7bzxh1j6.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <43aaec10-2696-44c9-8728-2045b83dc5d3@gmail.com>

Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com> writes:

Show 19 quoted lines

> There are two ways to change the approach here to fix the problem
> of needing prepare_repo_settings() everyhwere:
>
>  1. With the idea that these sparse-checkout variables are
>     critical to the functionality of the repo, they should move
>     into the repository struct itself and be initialized along
>     with all other values there. This changes the patches (and my
>     follow-up series) significantly, but mechanically.
>
>  2. If we are going to change the intention of the repo settings
>     struct to move from "optional one-off feature flags" to
>     "important information about the core behavior of a repo"
>     then we should prepare_repo_settings() when initializing the
>     repository struct.
>
> My preference is (1). The only argument for (2) that I can think
> of is that it is sometimes helpful to share only the settings for
> a repo without sharing the whole repo. But that seems like a weak
> reason right now.

I do agree with the sentiment that being able to pass &repo.settings to helper function makes us feel safer, but I agree that it is a weak argument. If we reexamine other things in repo_settings, it may turn out that the same reasoning applies to them and we may be better off to roll repo_settings into the repository itself (after all, it is an embedded structure, not even a pointer in the main structure that points at an indenendent repo_settings structure), but that is totally outside the scope of this discussion.

Thanks.