link_alt_odb_entries: make empty input a noop

If an empty string is passed to link_alt_odb_entries(), our
loop finds no entries and we link nothing. But we still do
some preparatory work to normalize the object directory
path, even though we'll never look at the result. This
triggers in basically every git process, since we feed the
usually-empty ALTERNATE_DB_ENVIRONMENT to the function.

Let's detect early that there's nothing to do and return.
While we're at it, let's treat NULL the same as an empty
string as a favor to our callers. That saves
prepare_alt_odb() from having to cover this case.

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

sha1_file.c

@@ -428,6 +428,9 @@ static void link_alt_odb_entries(const char *alt, int sep,
 	struct strbuf objdirbuf = STRBUF_INIT;
 	struct strbuf entry = STRBUF_INIT;
 
+	if (!alt || !*alt)
+		return;
+
 	if (depth > 5) {
 		error("%s: ignoring alternate object stores, nesting too deep.",
 				relative_base);
@@ -631,7 +634,6 @@ void prepare_alt_odb(void)
 		return;
 
 	alt = getenv(ALTERNATE_DB_ENVIRONMENT);
-	if (!alt) alt = "";
 
 	alt_odb_tail = &alt_odb_list;
 	link_alt_odb_entries(alt, PATH_SEP, NULL, 0);