Re: [Outreachy PATCH] notes-utils: hide functions that still need the_repository

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

On Thu, Nov 05, 2026 at 08:43:33AM +0100, Okhuomon Ajayi wrote:
> The helpers declared in notes-utils.h call into notes.c, which
> still only works on the_repository. write_notes_tree() writes
> its tree into the_repository->objects.
> 
> Passing a repository argument does not make these helpers work
> on another repository yet. Guard them with
> USE_THE_REPOSITORY_VARIABLE, as environment.h and repository.h
> do, so code that has dropped the global cannot call them by
> mistake.
> 
> Suggested-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
> Signed-off-by: Okhuomon Ajayi <okhuomonajayi54@gmail.com>
> ---
> This replaces my notes-utils series [1], which I'm dropping after
> Junio pointed out that the functions underneath, in notes.c, still
> only work on the_repository.
> 
> The guard also hides the enum and struct that notes-merge.h uses.
> All current users define USE_THE_REPOSITORY_VARIABLE, so nothing
> breaks today.

Hmm. Wouldn't the better course of actions be to instead fix "notes.c"?
It feels a bit weird to me to just make the whole header a pointless
include, and we don't do that for other headers, either. We have tons of
subsystems that still depend on `the_repository`, so what makes
"notes-utils.h" so special that we need to drop all of its functions?

What we indeed do sometimes is to mark some very small subset of
functions in a header as depending on `the_repository` in case the blast
radius of fixing all users is simply too big to do it in a single patch
series.

So I'm not sure whether this patch goes into a sensible direction.

Patrick