On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 04:20:10PM -0700, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> > 	struct commit_list list = { two, NULL };
> >
> > 	merge_bases_many(one, &list);
> 
> But (1) that is not what f755fb6 does; it does commit_list_insert() that
> has an allocation, and (2) how much work is to count, allocate and pass
> array for slow and less frequent codepath which octopus-merge-base is?

If (1) is the only problem, I can do it the way Dscho suggested, but I
don't exactly see why using a commit_list* can slow merge_bases() down:

for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
        ...
}

is probably as fast as

for (i = list; i; i = i->next) {
        ...
}

in case n = 0 / list->next is NULL.