+/*
+ * NEEDSWORK: these two are tricky. The callers assume there is a
+ * single, system-wide global state "where we read attributes from?"
+ * and when the state is flipped by calling git_attr_set_direction(),
+ * attr_stack is discarded so that subsequent attr_check will lazily
+ * read from the right place. And they do not know or care who called
+ * by them uses the attribute subsystem, hence have no knowledge of
+ * existing git_attr_check instances or future ones that will be
+ * created).
+ *
+ * Probably we need a thread_local that holds these two variables,
+ * and a list of git_attr_check instances (which need to be maintained
+ * by hooking into git_attr_check_alloc(), git_attr_check_initl(), and
+ * git_attr_check_clear(). Then git_attr_set_direction() updates the
+ * fields in that thread_local for these two variables, iterate over
+ * all the active git_attr_check instances and discard the attr_stack
+ * they hold. Yuck, but it sounds doable.
+ */