Re: [PATCH v2 0/5] root refs vs pseudorefs

From: Andy Koppe <andy.koppe@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 2, 2026, 22:19 UTC
Message-ID: <CAHWeT-YSK3xFA=Hztr3Uj5UW=L9JcC_0iOa5pUG-WGCpwng9vw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <f194e2af-cffc-4867-9069-7070c86785da@app.fastmail.com>

On Mon, 2 Nov 2026 at 21:01, Julia Evans wrote:

Show 34 quoted lines

> On Mon, Nov 2, 2026, at 2:47 PM, Andy Koppe wrote:
> > Root refs:
> > - Can be stored in reftables instead of files in .git.
> > - Contain either a single hash or a single symbolic ref such as 'ref:
> > refs/heads/main'.
> > - Can be modified with 'git update-ref' (generally a bad idea for
> > built-in root refs) and listed with 'git for-each-ref' and similar
> > commands.
> >
> > Pseudorefs:
> > - Are always stored as files in .git.
> > - May contain multiple hashes, and in the case of FETCH_HEAD, carry
> > additional information about where each hash came from.
> > - Are only modified by the commands they serve (i.e. fetch, merge and
> > pull) and can't be listed.
> >
> > The big thing they have in common, apart from the *_HEAD names, is
> > that you can pass both types to commands such as 'git log', 'git diff'
> > or 'git checkout' to refer to a commit or tree, just like any ref
> > under refs/.
>
> That’s very helpful. I think it would make sense to include
> “may contain multiple hashes” at least, that on its own
> makes it very clear what the difference is.
>
> My impression is that FETCH_HEAD specifically is a
> relatively popular pseudoref and folks would be interested to
> know that it can contain multiple hashes.
>
> If a pseudoref contains multiple hashes and you pass it to
> a command, will the command use the first hash?
>
> Also are FETCH_HEAD and MERGE_HEAD the only
> pseudorefs?

I think the pseudoref glossary entry covers these questions. As it appears in 'man' after v2:

pseudoref
    A name that can be used like a ref to refer to an object, but that
    is not stored in the same way as refs. For example, pseudorefs can
    be passed to git-log(1) or git-diff(1), but they cannot be written
    by git-update-ref(1) or listed by git-for-each-ref(1).

    The following pseudorefs are known to Git:

    •   FETCH_HEAD is written by git-fetch(1) or git-pull(1). It may
        refer to multiple object IDs. Each object ID is annotated with
        metadata indicating where it was fetched from and its fetch
        status.

    •   MERGE_HEAD is written by git-merge(1) when resolving merge
        conflicts. It contains all commit IDs which are being merged.

    When a pseudoref contains more than one object ID, using it to
    refer to an object yields the first one.