On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 11:19:46PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > - if (no_index) > > + if (no_index) { > > /* If this is a no-index diff, just run it and exit there. */ > > + startup_info->have_repository = 0; > > diff_no_index(&rev, argc, argv); > > + } > > This kind of change makes me nervous (partly because I am not seeing > the whole code but only this part of the patch). > > Some code may react to "have_repository" being zero and do the right > thing (which I think is what you are using from your previous "we > did one of the three cases" change here), but the codepath that led > to "have_repository" being set to non-zero previously must have done > a lot more than just flipping that field to non-zero, and setting > zero to this field alone would not "undo" what it did. I _think_ it's OK because the only substantive change would be the chdir() to the top of the working tree. But that information is carried through by revs->prefix, which we act on regardless of the value of startup_info->have_repository when we call prefix_filename(). I agree that it may be an accident waiting to happen, though, as soon as some buried sub-function needs to care about the distinction. > I wonder if we're better off if we made sure that diff_no_index() > works the same way regardless of the value of "have_repository" > field? If you mean adding a diffopt flag like "just abbreviate everything to FALLBACK_DEFAULT_ABBREV even if we're in a repository", and then setting that in diff_no_index(), I agree that is a lot cleaner. I'm still not 100% convinced that it's actually the correct behavior, but at least doing a more contained version wouldn't take away other functionality like reading config. -Peff