On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 11:45:15AM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > implication of which is that the 'at least one slash' > > rule was to expect things are 'refs/<anything>' so there will be at > > least one. Even back then, that <anything> alone had at least one > > slash (e.g. heads/master), but the intention was *never* that we > > would forbid <anything> that does not have a slash by feeding > > <anything> part alone to check-ref-format, i.e. things like > > "refs/stash" were designed to be allowed. > > Now I'm more confused. Until 5f7b202a (2008-01-01), there was a > comment > > if (level < 2) > return -2; /* at least of form "heads/blah" */ > > and that behavior has been preserved since the beginning. > > Why do most old callers pass a string that doesn't start with refs/ > (e.g., see the callers in 03feddd6, 2005-10-13)? Has the intent been > to relax the requirement since then? Yeah, this weird "do not allow refs/foo" behavior has continually confused me. Coincidentally I just noticed a case today where "pack-refs" treats "refs/foo" specially for no good reason: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/255729 After much head scratching over the years, I am of the opinion that nobody every really _meant_ to prevent "refs/foo", and that code comments like the one you quote above were an attempt to document existing buggy behavior that was really trying to differentiate "HEAD" from "refs/*". That's just my opinion, though. :) I'd be happy if all of the special-treatment of "refs/foo" went away and check_refname_format always got the full ref. -Peff -- 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