midx-write.c: assume checksum-invalid MIDXs require an update

In 6ce9d558ced (midx-write: skip rewriting MIDX with `--stdin-packs` unless needed, 2025-12-10), the MIDX machinery learned how to optimize out unnecessary writes with "--stdin-packs". In order to do this, it compares the contents of the in-progress write against a MIDX loaded directly from the object store. We load a separate MIDX (as opposed to checking our update relative to "ctx.m") because the MIDX code does not reuse an existing MIDX with --stdin-packs, and always leaves "ctx.m" as NULL. See commit 0c5a62f14bc (midx-write.c: do not read existing MIDX with `packs_to_include`, 2024-06-11) for details on why. If "ctx.m" is non-NULL, however, it is guaranteed to be checksum-valid, since we only assign "ctx.m" when "midx_checksum_valid()" returns true. Since the same guard does not exist for the MIDX we pass to "midx_needs_update()", we may ignore on-disk corruption when determining whether or not we can optimize out the write. Add a similar guard within "midx_needs_update()" to prevent such an issue. A more robust fix would involve revising 0c5a62f14bc and teaching the MIDX generation code how to reuse an existing MIDX even when invoked with "--stdin-packs", such that we could avoid side-loading the MIDX directly from the object store in order to call "midx_needs_update()". For now, pursue the minimal fix. Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Taylor Blau committed Jan 12, 2026 at 18:45 UTC 38b72e581513dfbef784a1b808d282df1e0504d2
2 files changed +15 -1
midx-write.c
+14
@@ -1021,6 +1021,20 @@ static bool midx_needs_update(struct multi_pack_index *midx, struct write_midx_c
1021 struct strbuf buf = STRBUF_INIT;
1022 bool needed = true;
1023
1024 + /*
1025 + * Ensure that we have a valid checksum before consulting the
1026 + * exisiting MIDX in order to determine if we can avoid an
1027 + * update.
1028 + *
1029 + * This is necessary because the given MIDX is loaded directly
1030 + * from the object store (because we still compare our proposed
1031 + * update to any on-disk MIDX regardless of whether or not we
1032 + * have assigned "ctx.m") and is thus not guaranteed to have a
1033 + * valid checksum.
1034 + */
1035 + if (!midx_checksum_valid(midx))
1036 + goto out;
1037 +
1038 /*
1039 * Ignore incremental updates for now. The assumption is that any
1040 * incremental update would be either empty (in which case we will bail
t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh
+1 -1
@@ -563,7 +563,7 @@ test_expect_success 'git fsck suppresses MIDX output with --no-progress' '
563 ! grep "Verifying object offsets" err
564 '
565
566 -test_expect_failure 'corrupt MIDX is not reused' '
566 +test_expect_success 'corrupt MIDX is not reused' '
567 corrupt_midx_and_verify $MIDX_BYTE_OFFSET "\377" $objdir \
568 "incorrect object offset" &&
569 git multi-pack-index write 2>err &&