Re: git gc seems to break --symbolic-full-name

From: Stas Sergeev <stsp@list.ru>
Date: Jul 21, 2017, 19:03 UTC
Message-ID: <223fa7c7-196d-e4fe-85b5-7d7cc576aa52@list.ru>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqbmodhb5h.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

21.07.2017 21:56, Junio C Hamano пишет:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Stas Sergeev <stsp@list.ru> writes:
>
>> I do the following:
>>
>> $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel
>> refs/heads/devel
>> $ ls -l .git/`git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel`
>> -rw-rw-r-- 1 stas stas 41 июл 21 15:05 .git/refs/heads/devel
>>
>> This is fine. But after git gc:
>>
>> $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel
>> refs/heads/devel
>> $ LC_ALL=C ls -l .git/`git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel`
>> ls: cannot access '.git/refs/heads/devel': No such file or directory
> This is expected, and in the modern world (like, after year 2007),
> a refname "refs/heads/foo" does *not* mean that there is a file
> with such a path under .git/ directory.  "rev-parse" does not return
> any "path" in the filesystem sense.
>
> See "git pack-refs --help", and depending on what you want to learn
> about the ref in question, perhaps "git show-ref refs/heads/devel"
> is what you want.

I wanted some kind of file to use it as a build dependency for the files that needs to be re-built when the head changes. This works very well besides git gc. What other method can be used as simply as that? git show-ref does not seem to be giving this.