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Fri, 4 Sep 2026 13:15:11 -0400 (EDT) From: Junio C Hamano To: Patrick Steinhardt Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, Karthik Nayak Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/11] Fix inconsistent ref storage format terminology In-Reply-To: <20260904-b4-pks-unify-ref-storage-format-v1-0-08144e5004ff@pks.im> (Patrick Steinhardt's message of "Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:36:01 +0200") References: <20260904-b4-pks-unify-ref-storage-format-v1-0-08144e5004ff@pks.im> Date: Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:15:10 -0700 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Patrick Steinhardt writes: > Hi, > > back when we gained support for reftables we of course introduced the > ability to control the reference storage format that is used by newly > created repositories. This infrastructure has grown over time, and > unfortunately without a lot of consistency: > > - The command line parameter to specify the ref storage format is > called "--ref-format=", while the corresponding repository extension > is called "refStorage". > > - In most cases we refer to the "ref storage format" in our docs, so > calling it "--ref-format=" is inconsistent with them. > > - It is possible to override the ref storage format via an environment > variable that is called "GIT_REFERENCE_BACKEND", which is not even > remotely consistent with anything else. > > - There is also an "object format", but that format does not control > how we store objects but rather whether we use SHA1 or SHA256. > > So in summary, it's a huge mess. Unless you are unifying them all into a single ref-storage-format, I do not see much practical difference between ref-storage and ref-format. They are both with insufficient clarity and details. ref-format fails to convey "format" of what aspect of ref it is about (among "storage", "name", and others), ref-storage fails to convey what aspect of ref storage it is talking about (among "format", "medium", and others).