Re: [PATCH] Do not ignore hidden refs

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Nov 18, 2006, 17:35 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0611180933360.3692@woody.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20061118041137.6064.75827.stgit@machine.or.cz>

On Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Petr Baudis wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

>
> Some of the ref manipulation tools (git-for-each-ref and git-show-ref in
> particular) would not handle hidden (~ /^\./) refs. This may be an
> acceptable or possibly even desirable behaviour for the ref walkers and
> repackers, but git-show-ref hiddenrefname must work.

No.

Refnames MUST NOT start with a ".".

It's not even about the traditional unix "hidden file" thing. It's simply a syntactic issue. A ref cannot start with a ".", because we use things like ".." and "..." to separate them.

For the same reason, a ref must not contain - anywhere in its name - a "^" or a ".." or the other magic characters.

If you want to hide refs, you should do so some other way.