Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 04/13] path-walk: always emit directly-requested objects

From: Taylor Blau <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2026 12:36:08 -0400

On Thu, May 21, 2026 at 07:00:39PM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
> > Could we instead store this explicitly on the type_and_oid_list, e.g. a
> > "direct" flag? I'm not sure whether that type has the right scope for
> > this information. If not, I wonder if there is another way to store this
> > information, since I worry that future callers may not know about this
> > convention and end up changing the result of the path-walk depending on
> > how they name their paths.
>
> I don't find this as fragile as you do, because these "direct" paths
> _need_ to start with '/' to avoid collisions with other paths that may
> exist _and_ this meaning is internal to the data within the API. Callers
> can't change this data, though they will see the paths themselves in the
> callback function.
>
> And as I mentioned before, this is a memory-efficient storage of this
> indicator bit because it only consumes memory when it is "on" and the
> vast majority of cases where it is "off" it doesn't take any extra
> storage.

Ah, I didn't realize that we added '/' at the beginning to avoid
collisions. This approach makes sense to me!

Thanks,
Taylor