On Sat, Dec 31, 2016 at 04:12:53AM +0100, Michael Haggerty wrote: > This function will most often be called by log_ref_write_1(), which > wants to append to the reflog file. In that case, it is silly to close > the file only for the caller to reopen it immediately. So, in the case > that the file was opened, pass the open file descriptor back to the > caller. Sounds like a much saner interface. > /* > - * Create a reflog for a ref. If force_create = 0, the reflog will > - * only be created for certain refs (those for which > - * should_autocreate_reflog returns non-zero. Otherwise, create it > - * regardless of the ref name. Fill in *err and return -1 on failure. > + * Create a reflog for a ref. Store its path to *logfile. If > + * force_create = 0, only create the reflog for certain refs (those > + * for which should_autocreate_reflog returns non-zero). Otherwise, > + * create it regardless of the reference name. If the logfile already > + * existed or was created, return 0 and set *logfd to the file > + * descriptor opened for appending to the file. If no logfile exists > + * and we decided not to create one, return 0 and set *logfd to -1. On > + * failure, fill in *err, set *logfd to -1, and return -1. > */ > -static int log_ref_setup(const char *refname, struct strbuf *logfile, struct strbuf *err, int force_create) > +static int log_ref_setup(const char *refname, > + struct strbuf *logfile, int *logfd, > + struct strbuf *err, int force_create) The return value is always "0" or "-1". It seems like it would be simpler to just return the descriptor instead of 0. I guess that makes it hard to identify the case when we chose not to create a descriptor. I wonder if more "normal" semantics would be: 1. ret >= 0: file existed or was created, and ret is the descriptor 2. ret < 0, err is empty: we chose not to create 3. ret < 0, err is non-empty: a real error I dunno. This may just be bikeshedding, and I can live with it either way (especially because you documented it!). -Peff