Re: [PATCH v2 02/11] reftable: consistently pass write opts as value

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 10, 2024, 21:11 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqy18h2wys.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <e6f8fc09c282e620a331a737c30a190107c76996.1715336798.git.ps@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> We sometimes pass the refatble write options as value and sometimes as a
> pointer. This is quite confusing and makes the reader wonder whether the
> options get modified sometimes.
>
> In fact, `reftable_new_writer()` does cause the caller-provided options
> to get updated when some values aren't set up. This is quite unexpected,
> but didn't cause any harm until now.
>
> Refactor the code to consistently pass the options as a value so that
> they are local to the subsystem they are being passed into so that we
> can avoid weirdness like this.

Turning pass-by-reference to pass-by-value of a large structure is a rather huge hammer to ensure that the structure is not modified (qualifying the pointer with "const" is). Consistency is good, but I am not sure offhand if this is making things consistent in a good way.