Re: "lock file exists" when fetching in bare clone of repository

> On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 05:33:23PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> > I'm sorry but I do not have an email client I could use to post to the
> > git mailing list.
> > Please could you post my thoughts on this to the list.
> >
> > https://lore.kernel.org/git/20250820213323.GA1667633@coredump.intra.peff.net/
> >
> > I use git 2.51.0 built using Macports on a very old version of macOS
> >
> > There are a couple of repos on github that were showing this problem:
> > vectorgraphics/asymptote
> > ghc/ghc
> >
> > Both of them were bare clones.
> >
> > I applied  --ref-format=reftable to the vectorgraphics/asymptote repo
> > and a fetch
> > went through to the end successfully
> >
> > The only snag I can see is that cgit no longer works. It says :
> > Failed to open github/vectorgraphics/asymptote: No such file or directory
> >
> > The version of cgit is about 5 years old
> 
> I think that's all expected. Unlike most systems which call Git commands
> like for-each-ref, etc, to access the ref store, cgit is linked directly
> against Git's C code (something we don't support, but the cgit authors
> accepted as a risk). So an old version of cgit will link against an old
> version of Git, and won't know about reftable at all.
> 
> It _might_ not even be able to detect the directory as a git repo,
> though I thought the reftable format was designed to let even old
> versions of Git see the repo (e.g., the dummy value in HEAD).