Message ID | 20181011211754.31369-1-sbeller@google.com (mailing list archive) |
---|---|
Headers | show |
Series | Bring more repository handles into our code base | expand |
> This series takes another approach as it doesn't change the signature of > functions, but introduces new functions that can deal with arbitrary > repositories, keeping the old function signature around using a shallow wrapper. > > Additionally each patch adds a semantic patch, that would port from the old to > the new function. These semantic patches are all applied in the very last patch, > but we could omit applying the last patch if it causes too many merge conflicts > and trickl in the semantic patches over time when there are no merge conflicts. Thanks, this looks like a good plan. One concern is that if we leave 2 versions of functions around, it will be difficult to look at a function and see if it's truly multi-repository-compatible (or making a call to a function that internally uses the_repository, and is thus wrong). But with the plan Stefan quoted [1], mentioned in commit e675765235 ("diff.c: remove implicit dependency on the_index", 2018-09-21): The plan is these macros will always be defined for all library files and the macros are only accessible in builtin/ (The macros include NO_THE_REPOSITORY_COMPATIBILITY_MACROS, which disables the single-repository function-like macros.) This mitigates the concern somewhat. [1] https://public-inbox.org/git/20181011211754.31369-1-sbeller@google.com/
Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes: > Additionally each patch adds a semantic patch, that would port from the old to > the new function. These semantic patches are all applied in the very last patch, > but we could omit applying the last patch if it causes too many merge conflicts > and trickl in the semantic patches over time when there are no merge conflicts. That's an interesting approach ;-) > The original goal of all these refactoring series was to remove add_submodule_odb > in submodule.c, which was partially reached with this series. Yup, that is a very good goalpost to keep in mind. > remaining calls in another series, but it shows we're close to be done with these > large refactorings as far as I am concerned. Nice.
Hi, Stefan Beller wrote: > This applies on nd/the-index (b3c7eef9b05) and is the logical continuation of > the object store series, which I sent over the last year. > > The previous series did take a very slow and pedantic approach, > using a #define trick, see cfc62fc98c for details, but it turns out, > that it doesn't work: Thanks for the heads up --- this will remind me to review this new series more carefully, since it differs from what was reviewed before. I think this will be easiest to review with --function-context. I can generate that diff locally, so no need to resend. > When changing the signature of widely used functions, it burdens the > maintainer in resolving the semantic conflicts. > > In the orginal approach this was called a feature, as then we can ensure > that not bugs creep into the code base during the merge window (while such > a refactoring series wanders from pu to master). It turns out this > was not well received and was just burdensome. I don't agree with this characterization. The question of who resolves conflicts is separate from the question of whether conflicts appear, which is in turn separate from the question of whether the build breaks. I consider making the build break when a caller tries to use a half-converted function too early to be a very useful feature. There is a way to do that in C++ that allows decoupled conversions, but the C version forced an ordering of the conversions. It seems that the pain was caused by the combination of 1. that coupling, which forced an ordering on the conversions and prevented us from ordering the patches in an order based on convenience of integration (unlike e.g. the "struct object_id" series which was able to proceed by taking a batch covering a quiet area of the tree at a time) 2. as you mentioned, removal of old API at the same time of addition of new API forced callers across the tree to update at once 3. the lack of having decided how to handle the anticipated churn Now most of the conversions are done (thanks much for that) so the ordering (1) is not the main remaining pain point. Thanks for tackling the other two in this series. I want future API changes to be easier. That means tackling the following questions up front: i. Where does this fit in Rusty's API rating scheme <http://sweng.the-davies.net/Home/rustys-api-design-manifesto>? Does misuse (or misconverted callers) break the build, break visibly at runtime, or are the effects more subtle? ii. Is there good test coverage for the new API? Are there tests that need to be migrated? iii. Is there a way to automatically migrate callers, or does this require manual, error-prone work (thanks for tackling that in this one.) iv. How are we planning to handle multiple patches in flight? Will the change produce merge conflicts? How can others on the list help the maintainer with integrating this set of changes? iv. Is the ending point cleaner than where we started? The #define trick you're referring to was a way of addressing (i). [...] > 79 files changed, 571 insertions(+), 278 deletions(-) Most of the increase is in the coccinelle file and in improved documentation. It appears that some patches use a the_index-style NO_THE_REPOSITORY_COMPATIBILITY_MACROS backward compatibility synonym and others don't. Can you say a little more about this aspect of the approach? Would the compatibility macros go away eventually? Thanks, Jonathan
On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 11:50 AM Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote: > > It appears that some patches use a the_index-style > NO_THE_REPOSITORY_COMPATIBILITY_MACROS backward compatibility synonym > and others don't. Can you say a little more about this aspect of the > approach? Would the compatibility macros go away eventually? I use the macro only when not doing the whole conversion in the patch (i.e. there is a coccinelle patch IFF there is the macro and vice versa). It's quite frankly a judgement call what I would convert as a whole and what not, it depends on the usage of the functions and if I know series that are in flight using it. The full conversion is easy to write if there are less than a hand full of callers, so for the "small case", I just did it, hoping it won't break other topics in flight.