On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 12:19:45AM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

We have an error_buf() helper that functions a bit like our error()
helper, but returns NULL instead of -1. Its return type is "const char
*", but this is overly restrictive. If we use the helper in a function
that returns non-const "char *", the compiler will complain about
the implicit cast from const to non-const.

Meanwhile, the const in the helper is doing nothing useful, as it only
ever returns NULL. Let's drop the const, which will let us use it in
both types of function.

This function signature is indeed quite misleading, and I'd argue that
it continues to be so even after the change. I guess the intent is to
make it a bit easier to print an error in functions that return a
string.

I'm not really a huge fan of this, but it's not a fault of this patch
series, so let's read on.

Patrick