Except for the pseudorefs MERGE_HEAD and FETCH_HEAD, all refs that live
in the root of the ref hierarchy behave the exact same as normal refs.
They can be symbolic refs or direct refs and can be read, iterated over
and written via normal tooling. All of these refs are stored in the ref
backends, which further demonstrates that they are just normal refs.
Extend the definition of "ref" to also cover such root refs. The only
additional restriction for root refs is that they must conform to a
specific naming schema.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Clarify limitations that pseudorefs have:
- They can be read via git-rev-parse(1) and similar tools.
- They are not surfaced when iterating through refs, like when using
git-for-each-ref(1). They are not refs, so iterating through refs
should not surface them.
- They cannot be written via git-update-ref(1) and related commands.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Nowadays, Git knows about three different kinds of refs. As defined in
gitglossary(7):
- Regular refs that start with "refs/", like "refs/heads/main".
- Pseudorefs, which live in the root directory. These must have
all-caps names and must be a file that start with an object hash.
Consequently, symbolic refs are not pseudorefs because they do not
start with an object hash.
- Special refs, of which we only have "FETCH_HEAD" and "MERGE_HEAD".
This state is extremely confusing, and I would claim that most folks
don't fully understand what is what here. The current definitions also
have several problems:
- Where does "HEAD" fit in? It's not a pseudoref because it can be
a symbolic ref. It's not a regular ref because it does not start
with "refs/". And it's not a special ref, either.
- There is a strong overlap between pseudorefs and special refs. The
pseudoref section for example mentions "MERGE_HEAD", even though it
is a special ref. Is it thus both a pseudoref and a special ref?
- Why do we even need to distinguish refs that live in the root from
other refs when they behave just like a regular ref anyway?
In other words, the current state is quite a mess and leads to wild
inconsistencies without much of a good reason.
The original reason why pseudorefs were introduced is that there are
some refs that sometimes behave like a ref, even though they aren't a
ref. And we really only have two of these nowadays, namely "MERGE_HEAD"
and "FETCH_HEAD". Those files are never written via the ref backends,
but are instead written by git-fetch(1), git-pull(1) and git-merge(1).
They contain additional metadata that highlights where a ref has been
fetched from or the list of commits that have been merged.
This original intent in fact matches the definition of special refs that
we have recently introduced in 8df4c5d205 (Documentation: add "special
refs" to the glossary, 2024-01-19). Due to the introduction of the new
reftable backend we were forced to distinguish those refs more clearly
such that we don't ever try to read or write them via the reftable
backend. In the same series, we also addressed all the other cases where
we used to write those special refs via the filesystem directly, thus
circumventing the ref backend, to instead write them via the backends.
Consequently, there are no other refs left anymore which are special.
Let's address this mess and return the pseudoref terminology back to its
original intent: a ref that sometimes behave like a ref, but which isn't
really a ref because it gets written to the filesystem directly. Or in
other words, let's redefine pseudorefs to match the current definition
of special refs. As special refs and pseudorefs are now the same per
definition, we can drop the "special refs" term again. It's not exposed
to our users and thus they wouldn't ever encounter that term anyway.
Refs that live in the root of the ref hierarchy but which are not
pseudorefs will be further defined in a subsequent commit.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Leakfix.
* rj/add-i-leak-fix:
add: plug a leak on interactive_add
add-patch: plug a leak handling the '/' command
add-interactive: plug a leak in get_untracked_files
apply: plug a leak in apply_data
Demote a BUG() to an die() when the failure from vsnprintf() may
not be due to a programmer error.
* rs/vsnprintf-failure-is-not-a-bug:
don't report vsnprintf(3) error as bug
The "receive-pack" program (which responds to "git push") was not
converted to run "git maintenance --auto" when other codepaths that
used to run "git gc --auto" were updated, which has been corrected.
* ps/run-auto-maintenance-in-receive-pack:
builtin/receive-pack: convert to use git-maintenance(1)
run-command: introduce function to prepare auto-maintenance process
When "git bisect" reports the commit it determined to be the
culprit, we used to show it in a format that does not honor common
UI tweaks, like log.date and log.decorate. The code has been
taught to use "git show" to follow more customizations.
* pk/bisect-use-show:
bisect: report the found commit with "show"
The filename used for rejected hunks "git apply --reject" creates
was limited to PATH_MAX, which has been lifted.
* rs/apply-reject-long-name:
apply: avoid using fixed-size buffer in write_out_one_reject()
When .git/rr-cache/ rerere database gets corrupted or rerere is fed to
work on a file with conflicted hunks resolved incompletely, the rerere
machinery got confused and segfaulted, which has been corrected.
* mr/rerere-crash-fix:
rerere: fix crashes due to unmatched opening conflict markers
GIt 2.44 introduced a regression that makes the updated code to
barf in repositories with multi-pack index written by older
versions of Git, which has been corrected.
* ps/missing-btmp-fix:
pack-bitmap: gracefully handle missing BTMP chunks
The code to format trailers have been cleaned up.
* la/format-trailer-info:
trailer: finish formatting unification
trailer: begin formatting unification
format_trailer_info(): append newline for non-trailer lines
format_trailer_info(): drop redundant unfold_value()
format_trailer_info(): use trailer_item objects
The cvsimport tests required that the platform understands
traditional timezone notations like CST6CDT, which has been
updated to work on those systems as long as they understand
POSIX notation with explicit tz transition dates.
* dd/t9604-use-posix-timezones:
t9604: Fix test for musl libc and new Debian
Git writes a "waiting for your editor" message on an incomplete
line after launching an editor, and then append another error
message on the same line if the editor errors out. It now clears
the "waiting for..." line before giving the error message.
* rj/launch-editor-error-message:
launch_editor: waiting message on error
The way "git fast-import" handles paths described in its input has
been tightened up and more clearly documented.
* ta/fast-import-parse-path-fix:
fast-import: make comments more precise
fast-import: forbid escaped NUL in paths
fast-import: document C-style escapes for paths
fast-import: improve documentation for path quoting
fast-import: remove dead strbuf
fast-import: allow unquoted empty path for root
fast-import: directly use strbufs for paths
fast-import: tighten path unquoting
The code to iterate over reftable blocks has seen some optimization
to reduce memory allocation and deallocation.
* ps/reftable-block-iteration-optim:
reftable/block: avoid copying block iterators on seek
reftable/block: reuse `zstream` state on inflation
reftable/block: open-code call to `uncompress2()`
reftable/block: reuse uncompressed blocks
reftable/reader: iterate to next block in place
reftable/block: move ownership of block reader into `struct table_iter`
reftable/block: introduce `block_reader_release()`
reftable/block: better grouping of functions
reftable/block: merge `block_iter_seek()` and `block_reader_seek()`
reftable/block: rename `block_reader_start()`
Plug a leak we have since 5a76aff1a6 (add: convert to use
parse_pathspec, 2013-07-14).
This leak can be triggered with:
$ git add -p anything
Fixing this leak allows us to mark as leak-free the following tests:
+ t3701-add-interactive.sh
+ t7514-commit-patch.sh
Mark them with "TEST_PASSES_SANITIZE_LEAK=true" to notice and fix
promply any new leak that may be introduced and triggered by them in the
future.
Signed-off-by: Rubén Justo <rjusto@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Plug a leak we have since ab1e1cccaf (built-in add -i: re-implement
`add-untracked` in C, 2019-11-29).
This leak can be triggered with:
$ echo a | git add -i
As a curiosity, we have a somewhat similar function in builtin/stash.c,
which correctly frees the memory.
Signed-off-by: Rubén Justo <rjusto@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
We have an execution path in apply_data that leaks the local struct
image. Plug it.
This leak can be triggered with:
$ echo foo >file
$ git add file && git commit -m file
$ echo bar >file
$ git diff file >diff
$ sed s/foo/frotz/ <diff >baddiff
$ git apply --cached <baddiff
Fixing this leak allows us to mark as leak-free the following tests:
+ t2016-checkout-patch.sh
+ t4103-apply-binary.sh
+ t4104-apply-boundary.sh
+ t4113-apply-ending.sh
+ t4117-apply-reject.sh
+ t4123-apply-shrink.sh
+ t4252-am-options.sh
+ t4258-am-quoted-cr.sh
Mark them with "TEST_PASSES_SANITIZE_LEAK=true" to notice and fix
promply any new leak that may be introduced and triggered by them in the
future.
Signed-off-by: Rubén Justo <rjusto@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The changelog entry for the new `git pack-refs --auto` mode only says
that the new flag is useful, but doesn't really say what it does. Add
some more information.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
strbuf_addf() has been reporting a negative return value of vsnprintf(3)
as a bug since f141bd804d (Handle broken vsnprintf implementations in
strbuf, 2007-11-13). Other functions copied that behavior:
7b03c89ebd (add xsnprintf helper function, 2015-09-24)
5ef264dbdb (strbuf.c: add `strbuf_insertf()` and `strbuf_vinsertf()`, 2019-02-25)
8d25663d70 (mem-pool: add mem_pool_strfmt(), 2024-02-25)
However, vsnprintf(3) can legitimately return a negative value if the
formatted output would be longer than INT_MAX. Stop accusing it of
being broken and just report the fact that formatting failed.
Suggested-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
