Re: [PATCH] chdir-notify.h: Removed unused param 'name'

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 14, 2026, 20:42 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqwltsl9gx.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20260814203100.GB2575854@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> I think this makes sense. It is often helpful in cleanup patches to
> summarize the history in the commit message. And then we can be sure
> that the unused field is OK to be removed, and it is not simply a bug
> that nobody is passing in the value.

Thanks for mentioning this. I also was curious when we lost the users of "name", as it is hard to believe that we introduced name that nobody uses from day one.

> I think ultimately the reason is that the only user of the "name" field
> was chdir_notify_reparent(), when it produced trace output. That went
> away in 5bf546755c (chdir-notify: drop unused `chdir_notify_reparent()`,
> 2026-06-25).

OK. That is fairly recent. The reason why we used to need reparent but we no longer do is because...?

    ... goes and looks ...

Ah, because the files backend of the refs subsystem started solving the issue it used to solve with _reparent() differently in the same series, losing the last caller of the _reparent() API.

Makes sense.

Show 7 quoted lines

> So those other patches were preparing for that world, though I think the
> ordering is somewhat confusing (and I won't be surprised if there was
> some intermediate state where turning on tracing might have caused a
> segfault).
>
> So AFAICT the patch itself is good, but it might be nice to give some
> explanation in the commit message.

Yes, that would be very helpful.

Thanks.