Documentation / technical / api-tree-walking.txton commit clone: use --progress to force progress reporting (5a518ad)
   1tree walking API
   2================
   3
   4The tree walking API is used to traverse and inspect trees.
   5
   6Data Structures
   7---------------
   8
   9`struct name_entry`::
  10
  11        An entry in a tree. Each entry has a sha1 identifier, pathname, and
  12        mode.
  13
  14`struct tree_desc`::
  15
  16        A semi-opaque data structure used to maintain the current state of the
  17        walk.
  18+
  19* `buffer` is a pointer into the memory representation of the tree. It always
  20points at the current entry being visited.
  21
  22* `size` counts the number of bytes left in the `buffer`.
  23
  24* `entry` points to the current entry being visited.
  25
  26`struct traverse_info`::
  27
  28        A structure used to maintain the state of a traversal.
  29+
  30* `prev` points to the traverse_info which was used to descend into the
  31current tree. If this is the top-level tree `prev` will point to
  32a dummy traverse_info.
  33
  34* `name` is the entry for the current tree (if the tree is a subtree).
  35
  36* `pathlen` is the length of the full path for the current tree.
  37
  38* `conflicts` can be used by callbacks to maintain directory-file conflicts.
  39
  40* `fn` is a callback called for each entry in the tree. See Traversing for more
  41information.
  42
  43* `data` can be anything the `fn` callback would want to use.
  44
  45Initializing
  46------------
  47
  48`init_tree_desc`::
  49
  50        Initialize a `tree_desc` and decode its first entry. The buffer and
  51        size parameters are assumed to be the same as the buffer and size
  52        members of `struct tree`.
  53
  54`fill_tree_descriptor`::
  55
  56        Initialize a `tree_desc` and decode its first entry given the sha1 of
  57        a tree. Returns the `buffer` member if the sha1 is a valid tree
  58        identifier and NULL otherwise.
  59
  60`setup_traverse_info`::
  61
  62        Initialize a `traverse_info` given the pathname of the tree to start
  63        traversing from. The `base` argument is assumed to be the `path`
  64        member of the `name_entry` being recursed into unless the tree is a
  65        top-level tree in which case the empty string ("") is used.
  66
  67Walking
  68-------
  69
  70`tree_entry`::
  71
  72        Visit the next entry in a tree. Returns 1 when there are more entries
  73        left to visit and 0 when all entries have been visited. This is
  74        commonly used in the test of a while loop.
  75
  76`tree_entry_len`::
  77
  78        Calculate the length of a tree entry's pathname. This utilizes the
  79        memory structure of a tree entry to avoid the overhead of using a
  80        generic strlen().
  81
  82`update_tree_entry`::
  83
  84        Walk to the next entry in a tree. This is commonly used in conjunction
  85        with `tree_entry_extract` to inspect the current entry.
  86
  87`tree_entry_extract`::
  88
  89        Decode the entry currently being visited (the one pointed to by
  90        `tree_desc's` `entry` member) and return the sha1 of the entry. The
  91        `pathp` and `modep` arguments are set to the entry's pathname and mode
  92        respectively.
  93
  94`get_tree_entry`::
  95
  96        Find an entry in a tree given a pathname and the sha1 of a tree to
  97        search. Returns 0 if the entry is found and -1 otherwise. The third
  98        and fourth parameters are set to the entry's sha1 and mode
  99        respectively.
 100
 101Traversing
 102----------
 103
 104`traverse_trees`::
 105
 106        Traverse `n` number of trees in parallel. The `fn` callback member of
 107        `traverse_info` is called once for each tree entry.
 108
 109`traverse_callback_t`::
 110        The arguments passed to the traverse callback are as follows:
 111+
 112* `n` counts the number of trees being traversed.
 113
 114* `mask` has its nth bit set if something exists in the nth entry.
 115
 116* `dirmask` has its nth bit set if the nth tree's entry is a directory.
 117
 118* `entry` is an array of size `n` where the nth entry is from the nth tree.
 119
 120* `info` maintains the state of the traversal.
 121
 122+
 123Returning a negative value will terminate the traversal. Otherwise the
 124return value is treated as an update mask. If the nth bit is set the nth tree
 125will be updated and if the bit is not set the nth tree entry will be the
 126same in the next callback invocation.
 127
 128`make_traverse_path`::
 129
 130        Generate the full pathname of a tree entry based from the root of the
 131        traversal. For example, if the traversal has recursed into another
 132        tree named "bar" the pathname of an entry "baz" in the "bar"
 133        tree would be "bar/baz".
 134
 135`traverse_path_len`::
 136
 137        Calculate the length of a pathname returned by `make_traverse_path`.
 138        This utilizes the memory structure of a tree entry to avoid the
 139        overhead of using a generic strlen().
 140
 141Authors
 142-------
 143
 144Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and Linus Torvalds
 145<torvalds@linux-foundation.org>