Re: Allowing "/" in the name of a git remote is a strange choice

From: Per Cederqvist <ceder@lysator.liu.se>
Date: Jul 4, 2025, 06:42 UTC
Message-ID: <CAHx6-UmL7qHf-0SoD1qrOKbWK5JjuESJaZdQK_rjy66RrYg0Xg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqikk8bltr.fsf@gitster.g>

On Fri, Jul 4, 2025 at 6:51 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

>
> Per Cederqvist <ceder@lysator.liu.se> writes:
>
> > Today I realized that git accepts "/" in a remote name.
> >
> > This can lead to problems. I have a repository that contains a branch
> > called "master" and another called "chat/master". Just for fun, I
> > added a second remote in this repository and named it
> > "origin/chat".
> >
> > Now, does "refs/remotes/origin/chat/master" refer to the branch
> > "chat/master" from "origin", or the branch "master" from
> > "origin/chat"? Git seems to think it refers to both:
>
> That would have been a fun experiment ;-)

It was. Luckily I figured this out while trying to deduce the allowed format of a remote name by reading the source code, not while trying to understand confusing behaviour from git.

Show 12 quoted lines

> > If it was up to me, I'd add a check to valid_remote_name() to ensure
> > the name doesn't contain any "/" character.  I doubt it is used often.
>
> If your remote-naming discipline is to always use two-levels
> (e.g. origin/chat, origin/chien, origin/lapin but never origin or
> origin/chat/blanc mixed in), then there is no confusion.
>
> It becomes only confusing if you mix origin and origin/chat.
>
> So it is not like we can just forbid '/' retroactively and expect no
> repercussions, especially given that I hear there are more than a
> few thousands of existing Git users in the world.

I wonder how many use "/" in a remote name, though. My guess is very few.

If you want to do anything about this, there are a few possible ways:

- forbid "/", but add a setting that allows it. Note that even if you forbid
  "/", existing clones will continue to work. It is only when you add a
  new remote that the name is checked.

- require that the number of "/" character in a remote is equal for all
   remotes in a particular clone

- deperecate "/" and start warning about it now, and forbid it after a
suitable period

    /ceder