From: Julia Evans <julia@jvns.ca>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2025 13:20:53 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] doc: add a explanation of Git's data model
Message-ID: <d1bd63d4-3ac7-458c-86e0-a4f7aac300d9@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALnO6CCsGtjcWBkjV0vsJHDCwiwt9eO2CsA1zFgwFiwJ-KLhew@mail.gmail.com>

>> >> I think I'll see if I can figure out a way to mention this and at the
>> >> same time remove most of the rest of the references to the `.git`
>> >> directory when explaining references (which you talked about
>> >> further down), including packed refs.
>> >
>> > A colleague will be explaining reflog for an audience tomorrow, and
>> > decided to briefly explain refs, too—which tells me this is
>> > much-needed.
>> >
>> > For refs themselves, perhaps "git for-each-ref" is a reasonable place
>> > to start? Since it tells you the refs you have and how to spell them
>> > explicitly regardless of how they are stored?
>>
>> Interesting, do you use git for-each-ref?
>> What do you use it for?
>
> Ah, yes, but primarily for scripting.
>
> What I should have clarified is that "the tool (I know of) to
> interrogate the refs you currently have is git-for-each-ref" (like how
> git-ls-remote is the tool to interrogate a remote's refs). It avoids
> the issues with assuming "tree .git/refs" or similar will capture the
> actual data.

Ah, that makes sense! I spent a little while trying to come up with
something that would give a "similar result" to running
`cat .git/<refname>` and I came up with this:

git for-each-ref <ref-name> --include-root-refs  --format="%(refname)   %(if)%(symref)%(then)%(symref)%(else)%(objectname:short)%(end)"

I hoped to find a simple equivalent to that `cat` command
(kind of the equivalent of `git cat-file -p`) that would work with
other ref backends but couldn't find one.