Re: [PATCH 0/9] for-each-ref optimizations & usability improvements

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Nov 7, 2023, 10:49 UTC
Message-ID: <ZUoWPpFHEi-PZjoD@tanuki>
In-Reply-To: <dbcbcf0e-aeee-4bb9-9e39-e2e85194d083@github.com>

On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 06:48:29PM -0800, Victoria Dye wrote:

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > "Victoria Dye via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

[snip]

Show 13 quoted lines

> >>  * I'm not attached to '--full-deref' as a name - if someone has an idea for
> >>    a more descriptive name, please suggest it!
> > 
> > Another candidate verb may be "to peel", and I have no strong
> > opinion between it and "to dereference".  But I have a mild aversion
> > to an abbreviation that is not strongly established.
> > 
> 
> Makes sense. I got the "deref" abbreviation for 'update-ref --no-deref', but
> 'show-ref' has a "--dereference" option and protocol v2's "ls-refs" includes
> a "peel" arg. "Dereference" is the term already used in the 'for-each-ref'
> documentation, though, so if no one comes in with an especially strong
> opinion on this I'll change the option to '--full-dereference'. Thanks!

But doesn't dereferencing in the context of git-update-ref(1) refer to something different? It's not about tags, but it is about symbolic references and whether we want to update the symref or the pointee. But true enough, in git-show-ref(1) "dereference" actually means that we should peel the tag.

To me it feels like preexisting commands are confused already. In my mind model:

    - "peel" means that an object gets resolved to one of its pointees.
      This also includes the case here, where a tag gets peeled to its
      pointee.

    - "dereference" means that a symbolic reference gets resolved to its
      pointee. This matches what we do in `git update-ref --no-deref`.

But after reading through the code I don't think we distinguish those terms cleanly throughout our codebase. Still, "peeling" feels like a better match in my opinion.

Patrick