Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] refs: allow reference location in refstorage config

From: Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 9, 2026, 12:25 UTC
Message-ID: <CAOLa=ZSpGXd0W9-1S5r5iDrifu4eeh=YTOf+OB27TH73cZ8iog@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <aYX7sYaTp6cArMxA@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

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> On Mon, Feb 02, 2026 at 01:26:30PM +0100, Karthik Nayak wrote:
>> The 'extensions.refStorage' config is used to specify the reference
>> backend for a given repository. Both the 'files' and 'reftable' backends
>> utilize the $GIT_DIR as the reference folder by default in
>> `get_main_ref_store()`.
>>
>> Since the reference backends are pluggable, this means that they should
>
> s/should/could/ I guess. It's not like they are broken currently, we
> rather want more.
>

Yeah, that's fair.

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>> diff --git a/repository.h b/repository.h
>> index 6063c4b846..c648dab196 100644
>> --- a/repository.h
>> +++ b/repository.h
>> @@ -150,6 +150,8 @@ struct repository {
>>
>>  	/* Repository's reference storage format, as serialized on disk. */
>>  	enum ref_storage_format ref_storage_format;
>> +	/* Reference storage information as needed for the backend. */
>
> Nit: it would be nice to document whether this only contains the
> additional data after the schema, or whether it's the whole
> "files:///dir" string.
>

Will add some more information here.

Show 9 quoted lines

> Another nit: ideally, the step to pass through the payload to the
> backends came before this patch so that we could already make them fail
> in case they are passed a value they don't understand. Otherwise, a user
> could now pass "reftable://foobar", and the "foobar" part would be
> silently ignored without any kind of warning or error.
>
> Other than that this patch looks good to me.
>
> Patrick

That's a good point, I hadn't considered, this should be simple enough to do, so let me put that together.

Karthik