On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 10:43:47AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Patrick Steinhardt [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

diff --git a/reftable/basics_test.c b/reftable/basics_test.c
index 997c4d9e01..af9209d535 100644
--- a/reftable/basics_test.c
+++ b/reftable/basics_test.c

@@ -58,8 +58,8 @@ static void test_binsearch(void)
 
 static void test_names_length(void)
 {
-	char *a[] = { "a", "b", NULL };
-	EXPECT(names_length(a) == 2);
+	char *names[] = { (char *)"a", (char *)"b", NULL };
+	EXPECT(names_length(names) == 2);
 }

I would have preferred to see this kind of rewrite more than
separate and clearly writable variables that are initialied with the
constant contents e.g. branches[] = "refs/heads/*", we saw in
earlier steps.  Wouldn't that approach, combined with making the
literal constants stored in read-only segment to trigger runtime
failure when a bug causes the "unfortunately non-const" variables
to be written, give us a better result?

Depends on what we mean by "better", I guess. But yeah, I was torn
myself when writing this commit because there are so many string
constants in the reftable tests that we assign to non-constant fields. I
didn't find the result particularly easy to read when putting each of
the constants into a separate variable.

Revisiting this again though I don't think it's all that bad. I'll adapt
accordingly.

Patrick