Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 05:28:29PM -0800, Brandon Williams wrote: > >> +/* >> + * Determine if a submodule has been populated at a given 'path' >> + */ >> +int is_submodule_populated(const char *path) >> +{ >> + int ret = 0; >> + struct stat st; >> + char *gitdir = xstrfmt("%s/.git", path); >> + >> + if (!stat(gitdir, &st)) >> + ret = 1; >> + >> + free(gitdir); >> + return ret; >> +} > > I don't know if it's worth changing or not, but this could be a bit > shorter: > > int is_submodule_populated(const char *path) > { > return !access(mkpath("%s/.git", path), F_OK); > } > > There is a file_exists() helper, but it uses lstat(), which I think you > don't want (because you'd prefer to bail on a broken .git symlink). But > access(F_OK) does what you want, I think. > > mkpath() is generally an unsafe function because it uses a static > buffer, but it's handy and safe for handing values to syscalls like > this. I think your "unsafe" is not about thread-safety but about "the caller cannot rely on returned value staying valid for long haul". If this change since v5 is about thread-safety, I am not sure if it is safe to use mkpath here. I am a bit wary of making the check too sketchy like this, but this is not about determining if a random "path" that has ".git" in a superproject working tree is a submodule or not (that information primarily comes from the superproject index), so I tend to agree with the patch that it is sufficient to check presence of ".git" alone.