Re: [Outreachy] Question about check-ref-format test coverage

[Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>]

Hi Fien

On 23/10/2026 16:29, Fien Dora wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> I'm called Fien Dora and outreachy applicant for the December 2026
> Cohort. I'm interested in the git project "Improve how command
> arguments and options are scanned and parsed."
> I'm new to open source generally but i'm ready to learn and contribute
> 
> I've been getting familiar with the git codebase, I've successfully
> cloned and built Git from the source on my Mac, ran the
> parse-options(96 test) and check-ref-format tests (107 tests), all
> passed.

That's good

> While I was exploring builtin/check-ref-format.c, I noticed that Git
> supports --allow-onelevel and --no-allow-onelevel, but I couldn't find
> any tests of --no-allow-onelevel in the t/ directory.

Yes, "git grep -e --no-allow-onelevel" shows we don't have any tests for 
that, adding one would be useful.

> i tried running
> 
> ./git check-ref-format --allow-onelevel foo
> 
> ./git check-ref-format --allow-onelevel --no-allow-onelevel foo
> 
> it returned with an exit code of 0 and 1 respectively.

That's expected because --no-allow-onelevel comes later on the command 
line it overrides --allow-onelevel and so we exit 1 because the ref does 
not contain a '/' character.

> I've also gone through the list archives and saw an earlier outreachy
> work converting check-ref-format to use parse-options.

It's great that you've checked the archives, be sure to bear in mind the 
feedback that was given when you're writing your patch.
> Would adding tests for --allow-onelevel, particularly how it works
> with --no-allow-onelevel be a good contribution for my Outreachy
> microproject?

It sounds like a useful project to me, it is small and self contained 
and improves our codebase.

Thanks

Phillip