Re: [PATCH] repository.c: fix sparse warning

[Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com>]

On 17/01/2019 10:06, Duy Nguyen wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 8:21 AM Ramsay Jones
> <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com>
>> ---
>>
>> Hi Duy,
>>
>> If you need to re-roll your 'nd/the-index-final' branch, could you
>> please squash this into the relevant patch (commit 4478671442,
>> "cache.h: flip NO_THE_INDEX_COMPATIBILITY_MACROS switch", 2019-01-12).
>>
>> [the warning is caused by the lack of the extern declaration of the
>> 'the_index' symbol.]
> 
> Is it a false alarm? The variable is actually defined in this file now
> which should also function as a declaration, yes?

Ah, no, absolutely not! :( (er, well yes, but no! :-D ).

I hope you agree that _all_ uses of a symbol should be within
the scope of the same declaration of that symbol (by #include-ing
the same header/interface file). This is _especially_ true of
the file which has the definition of that symbol - how else do
you expect the compiler to detect a mismatch between the declaration
and definition?

ATB,
Ramsay Jones