Re: [PATCH] read-cache: hide refresh_cache_entry()

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2026 at 01:34:42PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Once upon a time, there was a merge strategy called "recursive",
> which was added in 6d297f8137 (Status update on merge-recursive in
> C, 2006-07-08).  This implementation came with its own machinery
> that creates an in-core index entry, and then refreshed the index
> entry it created by calling the refresh_cache_entry() function
> borrowed from the read-cache.c API.  refresh_cache_entry() used to
> be file-scope static, but was made public with this change.
> 
> When ad45b327c0 (merge-recursive.[ch]: thoroughly debug these,
> 2025-04-08) finally removed the entire code for the "recursive"
> merge strategy, the last external caller of refresh_cache_entry()
> went with it.
> 
> Hide the low-level implementation detail again by making it a
> file-scope static function.  The external callers would indirectly
> call it when they call make_cache_entry() or rename_index_entry_at()
> external interface, which "ort" (the successor of "recursive") does.

Seeing all these patches dropping public declarations I wonder whether
they should have been part of the same patch series :)

> diff --git a/read-cache.c b/read-cache.c
> index c4cf08a3a3..94dff890a7 100644
> --- a/read-cache.c
> +++ b/read-cache.c
> @@ -129,6 +129,8 @@ static struct mem_pool *find_mem_pool(struct index_state *istate)
>  	return *pool_ptr;
>  }
>  
> +static struct cache_entry *refresh_cache_entry(struct index_state *, struct cache_entry *, unsigned int);
> +
>  static const char *alternate_index_output;
>  
>  static void set_index_entry(struct index_state *istate, int nr, struct cache_entry *ce)

Could we avoid this forward declaration by moving the function around?

Patrick