alternates: use a separate scratch space

The alternate_object_database struct uses a single buffer
both for storing the path to the alternate, and as a scratch
buffer for forming object names. This is efficient (since
otherwise we'd end up storing the path twice), but it makes
life hard for callers who just want to know the path to the
alternate. They have to remember to stop reading after
"alt->name - alt->base" bytes, and to subtract one for the
trailing '/'.

It would be much simpler if they could simply access a
NUL-terminated path string. We could encapsulate this in a
function which puts a NUL in the scratch buffer and returns
the string, but that opens up questions about the lifetime
of the result. The first time another caller uses the
alternate, the scratch buffer may get other data tacked onto
it.

Let's instead just store the root path separately from the
scratch buffer. There aren't enough alternates being stored
for the duplicated data to matter for performance, and this
keeps things simple and safe for the callers.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/cache.h b/cache.h
index ece2c7c9b8..555ba713de 100644
--- a/cache.h
+++ b/cache.h
@@ -1383,8 +1383,11 @@ extern void remove_scheduled_dirs(void);
 
 extern struct alternate_object_database {
 	struct alternate_object_database *next;
+
 	char *name;
-	char base[FLEX_ARRAY]; /* more */
+	char *scratch;
+
+	char path[FLEX_ARRAY];
 } *alt_odb_list;
 extern void prepare_alt_odb(void);
 extern void read_info_alternates(const char * relative_base, int depth);