Re: [PATCH v2 14/14] update-index: remove static globals from callbacks

Eric Sunshine [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

It could be possible to replace all references to 'istate' with
'repo->index' but the patches get slightly more messy. I also
think the code looks messier, but you do make a good point that
there is no concrete reason to separate the two.

I agree that it would make the code a bit noisier (to read) if
`istate` is eliminated from the callback structure, however, even
though I didn't originally feel strongly one way or the other about
having both `repo` and `istate` in the structure, I'm now leaning more
toward seeing `istate` eliminated. My one (big) concern with `istate`
is that it confuses readers into wondering whether `istate` and
`repo->istate` will ever be different.

Some applications may want to work on more than one in-core index at
the same time (perhaps a merge strategy may want to keep a copy of
the original index and update a second copy with the result of the
merge), and it may be useful for such applications if 'repo->istate'
does not have to be the in-core index instance to be worked on.  So
things that go in libgit.a may want to allow such distinction.

But what goes in builtin/ is a different story.  As long as this
application has no need for such a feature and will always work on
the primary in-core index, prepared for the in-core repository
structure for convenience, it may not worth it to support such a
feature that no callers benefit from.

Thanks.