Re: [PATCH 00/22] Lockfile refactoring and pre-activation

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 05:58:08PM +0200, Michael Haggerty wrote:

> I've had this patch series kicking around for a long time, along with
> some followup patches to fix a race in reference deletion.  I haven't
> had the time to get everything done and tested, but let me at least
> push this first series out there.  I especially want to submit it in
> case we accept a GSoC student for the project "Refactor tempfile
> handling", because (1) I don't want me and the student to be stepping
> on each others' toes, and (2) there are some cleanups and
> documentation improvements here that will hopefully be useful to the
> student.

Thanks, this sort of preparation for GSoC students is very much welcome.

> The first patch actually demonstrates the race condition that I hope
> to fix someday.  The last patch introduces the lockfile feature that I
> think is needed to fix it: the ability to activate a packed-refs file
> while still holding the lock to prevent another process from
> overwriting it before the accompanying loose reference updates are all
> finished.  But the fix itself is not included here, so you might want
> to keep the last patch on hold until there is a concrete user of the
> feature.

I should have read this more carefully when I responded to the final
patch. I surmised your intent based on our previous work on packed-refs,
but here you spell out my guesses explicitly. :)

I think all of the patches look good. I'd prefer to hold back the final
one (and probably 19/22, which has no purpose except to prepare for
22/22) until seeing its application in practice.

Thanks for a very pleasant read.

-Peff