From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pb-smtp21.pobox.com (pb-smtp21.pobox.com [173.228.157.53]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 263B976915 for ; Thu, 21 Dec 2023 20:40:08 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=pobox.com Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=pobox.com Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=pobox.com header.i=@pobox.com header.b="YXMm45hW" Received: from pb-smtp21.pobox.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by pb-smtp21.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4ABC7195A2; Thu, 21 Dec 2023 15:40:08 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from junio@pobox.com) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed; d=pobox.com; h=from:to:cc :subject:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:mime-version :content-type; s=sasl; bh=z/Ff8MM2lO+mqVEjJlEMMalLLMxbpbquv3s4yy 1TSHs=; b=YXMm45hWKi9RMh+KLR1dLzfvm8SqRRwXK2aEtItAaUaaewDdeS/YJe iVByI0++/fS5KtWpqdgH7cAzAjm/ncvugzCK+InIKJ177wtbqai961nRp7GBOrJ7 KhjXZ/E+1Q0nc9ucYcj0go91aOFR+RyIb6ajz5flumsPCElLQUUZk= Received: from pb-smtp21.sea.icgroup.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by pb-smtp21.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2EB95195A1; Thu, 21 Dec 2023 15:40:08 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from junio@pobox.com) Received: from pobox.com (unknown [34.125.193.51]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pb-smtp21.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id BBDDC1959D; Thu, 21 Dec 2023 15:40:04 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from junio@pobox.com) From: Junio C Hamano To: Karthik Nayak Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, ps@pks.im, christian.couder@gmail.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] ref-filter: support filtering of operational refs In-Reply-To: <20231221170715.110565-3-karthik.188@gmail.com> (Karthik Nayak's message of "Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:07:15 +0100") References: <20231221170715.110565-1-karthik.188@gmail.com> <20231221170715.110565-3-karthik.188@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:40:03 -0800 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 X-Pobox-Relay-ID: 1EF60ED8-A041-11EE-BD32-A19503B9AAD1-77302942!pb-smtp21.pobox.com Karthik Nayak writes: > With the upcoming introduction of the reftable backend, it becomes ever > so important to provide the necessary tooling for printing all refs > associated with a repository. We have pseudoref (those all caps files outside the refs/ hierarchy) as an official term defined in the glossary, and Patrick's reftable work based on Han-Wen's work revealed the need to treat FETCH_HEAD and MERGE_HEAD as "even more pecurilar than pseudorefs" that need different term (tentatively called "special refs"). Please avoid coming up with yet another random name "operational" without discussing. With a quick look at the table in this patch, "pseudorefs" appears to be the closest word that people are already familiar with, I think. A lot more reasonable thing to do may be to scan the $GIT_DIR for files whose name satisfy refs.c:is_pseudoref_syntax() and list them, instead of having a hardcoded list of these special refs. In addition, when reftable and other backends that can natively store things outside refs/ hierarchy is in use, they ought to know what they have so enumerating these would not be an issue for them without having such a hardcoded table of names.