Re: [PATCH] repository: fix free problem with repo_clear(the_repository)

[Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 8:00 PM, Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
> discard_index(repo->index);
> if (repo->index != &the_index)
>         FREE_AND_NULL(repo->index);
>
>> What is your use case of repo_clear(the_repository)?
>
> No actual use case right now. See [1] for the code that triggered
> this. I do want to free some memory in pack-objects and repo_clear()
> _might_ be the one. I'm not sure yet.

Another use case for repo_clear(the_repository) is "git worktree
move". Part of the reason I did not support moving the main repository
with that command is because I wanted to shut down every access  to
$MAIN_WORK_TREE/.git before moving $MAIN_WORK_TREE. It's probably not
a problem for linux/mac platforms to move files (on the same file
system [1]) with file descriptors still open, but I'm pretty sure it
won't work on Windows. If repo_clear() does its job well, I should be
able to safely move $GIT_WORK_TREE after that.

[1] if we move across file systems then another set of problems arise:
if file descriptors remain open, writing to those will not affect the
new copies in the target. We do not support moving across filesystems
yet, but we should not shut that door now.
-- 
Duy