Christian Couder <chriscool@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > You are right, so what about moving ".git/refs/heads/frotz" > to ".git/deleted-refs/heads/frotz.ref" > or ".git/deleted-refs/heads/frotz~ref" (because "~" is forbidden in ref > names). But wouldn't it bring up the issue of locking among deleters, updaters/creators, and traversers? If we choose to use packed-refs.lock as the "set of all refs" lock, the whole sequence would become something like this. Note that this tries to make readers lockless but I am sure there are nasty race condition issues. I am not sure what we would want to do about them. = Looking up a ref $frotz. - check if .git/$frotz exists, and use it if it does. - check if .git/deleted-refs/$frotz~ref exists, and return "no such ref" if it does. - find $frotz in .git/packed-refs. = Looping over refs. - grab all .git/refs/ and subtract all .git/deleted-refs/ - walk .git/packed-refs and the result from the above in parallel as in the current code. = Storing a new value in ref $frotz. - acquire .git/packed-refs.lock - lock .git/$frotz.lock. - write into .git/$frotz.lock. - create or update .git/logs/$frotz as needed. - if .git/deleted-refs/$frotz~ref exists, unlink it. - rename .git/$frotz.lock to .git/$frotz to unlock it. - unlink .git/packed-refs.lock = Deleting a ref $frotz. - acquire .git/packed-refs.lock - look up $frotz; if it does not exist either barf or return silent (haven't thought it through yet). - create .git/deleted-refs/$frotz~ref. - remove .git/logs/$frotz - unlink .git/packed-refs.lock = Packing refs, with optional pruning. - lock .git/packed-refs.lock - loop over refs: - write it out to .git/packed-refs.lock unless a symref. - if it is a loose one (not a symref), remember it for pruning. - if pruning: - remove the entire .git/deleted-refs/ hierarchy - remove the remembered ones - rename .git/packed-refs.lock to .git/packed-refs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html