From: Linus Torvalds Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:35:18 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Do not ignore hidden refs Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20061118041137.6064.75827.stgit@machine.or.cz> On Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Petr Baudis wrote: > > 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.