On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 10:46 PM, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > 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. > There are also a lot of places where we assume that a refs will start with "refs/heads/" and not just "refs/" for_each_branch_ref(), log_ref_setup() (so no reflogs) is_branch() to name a few. This makes the api a bit confusing and hard to predict. Which functions allow refs/foo and which will ignore it? Are there any compelling reasons why refs/foo should be allowed? -- 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