From: Phillip Wood Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:37:39 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] rebase: skip branch symref aliases Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On 03/06/2026 11:27, Son Luong Ngoc via GitGitGadget wrote: > From: Son Luong Ngoc > > git rebase --update-refs can fail after the normal rebase path has > updated the current branch when another local branch is a symref to it. > This can happen during a default-branch rename where refs/heads/main > points at refs/heads/master while users migrate. > > The sequencer queues update-ref commands from local branch decorations. > Commit 106b6885c7 (rebase: ignore non-branch update-refs) filters out > decorations that are not local branches, such as HEAD and tags. A branch > symref is different: it is still a local branch decoration, but if it > resolves to another branch then that target branch is itself present in > the decoration list and will be updated as a concrete branch. > > Skip branch decorations whose symrefs resolve to refs/heads/*, because > those targets are already represented by concrete branch decorations. > This prevents aliases from scheduling a second update for the same > branch. Keep symrefs to non-branch targets on the existing path. Makes sense > Preserve the existing checked-out branch handling before applying these > skips. Such refs still need a todo-list comment instead of an update-ref > command, even when the checked-out ref is the branch being rebased or a > branch symref alias. Use a copy of the resolved HEAD ref so later ref > resolution does not overwrite it. I don't quite understand this. A symref that points to another branch should always be skipped. When we look up which branches are checked out (see worktree.c:add_head_info()) we use refs_resolve_ref_unsafe(get_worktree_ref_store(wt), "HEAD", 0, &wt->head_oid, &flags); so it will never report a symref as being checked out - it always resolves any symrefs first. If we have a symref pointing somewhere outside of "refs/heads" then we need to check whether the target is checked out, not the symref itself. I'm not sure how likely that is to happen in practice. > diff --git a/sequencer.c b/sequencer.c > index 1ee4b2875b..6ab8b47108 100644 > --- a/sequencer.c > +++ b/sequencer.c > @@ -6445,28 +6445,46 @@ static int add_decorations_to_list(const struct commit *commit, > struct todo_add_branch_context *ctx) > { > const struct name_decoration *decoration = get_name_decoration(&commit->object); > - const char *head_ref = refs_resolve_ref_unsafe(get_main_ref_store(the_repository), > - "HEAD", > - RESOLVE_REF_READING, > - NULL, > - NULL); > + struct ref_store *refs = get_main_ref_store(the_repository); > + char *head_ref = refs_resolve_refdup(refs, "HEAD", > + RESOLVE_REF_READING, > + NULL, NULL); This part and the test look good now > while (decoration) { > struct todo_item *item; > const char *path; > + const char *resolved_ref; > + int flags = 0; > size_t base_offset = ctx->buf->len; > > /* > - * If the branch is the current HEAD, then it will be > - * updated by the default rebase behavior. > - * Exclude it from the list of refs to update, > - * as well as any non-branch decorations. > * Non-branch decorations may be present if the pretty format > * includes "%d", which would have loaded all refs > * into the global decoration table. > */ > - if ((head_ref && !strcmp(head_ref, decoration->name)) || > - (decoration->type != DECORATION_REF_LOCAL)) { > + if (decoration->type != DECORATION_REF_LOCAL) { > + decoration = decoration->next; > + continue; > + } If a decoration matches the current branch why don't we just skip it like we used to? (As an aside the existing code in wrong because if the user runs "git rebase --update-refs " HEAD does not point to "" but lets not worry about that now) > + path = branch_checked_out(decoration->name); As I said above if the symref target is anther branch we should skip it and if the target is not a branch then we need to check if the target is checked out so we need to resolve the ref before calling branch_checked_out(). Thanks Phillip