On Wed, Jan 03, 2024 at 04:52:36PM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote: > On Wed, Jan 03, 2024 at 10:45:49AM -0500, Taylor Blau wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 03, 2024 at 09:52:33AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote: > > > > I tend to agree that the special empty pattern would be a good shorthand > > > > for listing all references underneath refs/, including any top-level > > > > psuedo-refs. > > > > > > > > But I don't think that I quite follow what Karthik is saying here. > > > > for-each-ref returns the union of references that match the given > > > > pattern(s), not their intersection. So if you wanted to list just the > > > > psudo-refs ending in '_HEAD', you'd do: > > > > > > > > $ git for-each-ref "*_HEAD" > > > > > > > > I think if you wanted to list all pseudo-refs, calling the option > > > > `--pseudo-refs` seems reasonable. But if you want to list some subset of > > > > psueod-refs matching a given pattern, you should specify that pattern > > > > directly. > > > > > > Where I think this proposal falls short is if you have refs outside of > > > the "refs/" hierarchy. Granted, this is nothing that should usually > > > happen nowadays. But I think we should safeguard us for the future: > > > > Hmm. Maybe I misspoke, but I was thinking that `--pseudo-refs` would > > imply that we list all references (regardless of whether they appear in > > the top-level refs/ hierarchy). But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what > > you're trying to accomplish here. > > Ah, okay. I think in that case it's simply a misunderstanding. To me a > pseudo-ref only includes refs that match `is_pseudoref_syntax()`, so > things like "HEAD", "ORIG_HEAD" or "MERGE_HEAD". So with that > understanding, a ref "something/outside/refs" would not be included, > but I'd very much like to see it listed. OK, I see: you're trying to add an option that lists all references (including those outside of the top-level "refs/" hierarchy). But my proposal to use `--pseudo-refs` was to list *just* those references outside of the top-level hierarchy. I wonder if we might want to do something else entirely, which is an option which controls the top-level "namespace" of references that we want to see. The behavior would then be to list all references under "namespace" (which presumably would be "refs/" by default). If you want to list references like something/outside/refs, your namespace would then be --namespace="". I think that this would be a bit more flexible than the current suggestions, but I am also not as familiar as you are at this particular problem :-). Thanks, Taylor
