Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/12] tree-wide: chip away at USE_THE_INDEX_COMPATIBILITY_MACROS

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2022 13:21:27 +0100

On Fri, Nov 18 2022, Phillip Wood wrote:

> Hi Ævar
>
> On 18/11/2022 11:30, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>> As 3/12 here notes we've been undergoing a sloooow migration away from
>> functions that provide "the_index" for you since 2007, with the last
>> major move away from some of them being in 2019.
>
> The commit cited in 3/12 actually introduced most of these
> macros. What it did was remove the dependency on `the_index` from
> cache.c. Maybe I'm missing some context but I struggling to see the
> benefit in removing the macros with out removing the dependency on
> `the_index`. Doing that would require much more manual work as it
> cannot be automated with coccinelle but it would provide a tangible
> benefit which I don't see here.

I didn't cover this myself as I figured the linked-to commits & context
covered it: But no, there is no great benefit to doing this, it's just
janitorial work.

My proximate motivation for this is having written this to libify some
code in a parallel series: [1].

Does that in itself justify this? No, far from it. But we've had this
supposed online migration for years, I tihnk we shouldn't rush to do
those sorts of things needlessly (e.g. let's avoid conflicts with other
in-flight stuff, if it can be helped), but leaving it for another 4-10
years would also suck.

1. https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/