Re: [PATCH][GSOC] Selection of the verbose message is replaced with generated message in install_branch_config()

[Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On 03/21/2014 06:09 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:
>>
>>> Sorry, you're right about message[0] case not being a crasher (though
>>> the assert() still seems overkill).
>>
>> Assert() often becomes no-op in production build.  I think this may
>> be an indication that "table-driven" may not be as good an approach
>> as many candidates thought.  The microproject suggestion asks them
>> to think _if_ that makes sense, and it is perfectly fine for them if
>> they answer "no, it introduces more problems than it solves".
>
> My expectation when I invented that microproject was that converting the
> code to be table-driven would be judged *not* to be an improvement.  I
> was hoping that a student would say "the 'if' statement is OK, but let's
> delete this ridiculous unreachable else branch".  Possibly they would
> convert the "if" chain into nested "if"s, which I think would allow some
> code consolidation in one of the branches.
>
> But not a single student agreed with me, so I must be in a minority of
> one (which, unfortunately, is the definition of lunacy).

Adam NoLastName did stick with the 'if' statements and removed the
unreachable branch  [1], although he didn't say if he had considered
the table-driven approach and discarded it.

[1]: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/243704

> The multidimensional array lookup table is not so terrible, but I
> personally still prefer the "if".
>
> Michael
>
> --
> Michael Haggerty
> mhagger@alum.mit.edu
> http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/