gfile: Explain nonobvious use of my_error

In g_file_make_directory_with_parents(), the my_error variable is used
for several different purposes throughout the whole function, not all of
which are obvious. This explains the situation with some comments.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=719455

diff --git a/gio/gfile.c b/gio/gfile.c
index 65083ef..22f7423 100644 (file)
--- a/gio/gfile.c
+++ b/gio/gfile.c
@@ -3757,6 +3757,11 @@ g_file_make_directory_with_parents (GFile         *file,
   if (g_cancellable_set_error_if_cancelled (cancellable, error))
     return FALSE;
 
+  /* Try for the simple case of not having to create any parent
+   * directories.  If any parent directory needs to be created, this
+   * call will fail with NOT_FOUND. If that happens, then that value of
+   * my_error persists into the while loop below.
+   */
   g_file_make_directory (file, cancellable, &my_error);
   if (!g_error_matches (my_error, G_IO_ERROR, G_IO_ERROR_NOT_FOUND))
     {
@@ -3767,6 +3772,13 @@ g_file_make_directory_with_parents (GFile         *file,
 
   work_file = g_object_ref (file);
 
+  /* Creates the parent directories as needed. In case any particular
+   * creation operation fails for lack of other parent directories
+   * (NOT_FOUND), the directory is added to a list of directories to
+   * create later, and the value of my_error is retained until the next
+   * iteration of the loop.  After the loop my_error should either be
+   * empty or contain a real failure condition.
+   */
   while (g_error_matches (my_error, G_IO_ERROR, G_IO_ERROR_NOT_FOUND))
     {
       GFile *parent_file;
@@ -3792,6 +3804,11 @@ g_file_make_directory_with_parents (GFile         *file,
         g_object_unref (parent_file);
     }
 
+  /* All directories should be able to be created now, so an error at
+   * this point means the whole operation must fail -- except an EXISTS
+   * error, which means that another process already created the
+   * directory in between the previous failure and now.
+   */
   for (l = list; my_error == NULL && l; l = l->next)
     {
       g_file_make_directory ((GFile *) l->data, cancellable, &my_error);
@@ -3809,6 +3826,10 @@ g_file_make_directory_with_parents (GFile         *file,
       list = g_list_remove (list, list->data);
     }
 
+  /* At this point an error in my_error means a that something
+   * unexpected failed in either of the loops above, so the whole
+   * operation must fail.
+   */
   if (my_error != NULL)
     {
       g_propagate_error (error, my_error);