Re: [PATCH 1/2] refs: support obtaining ref_store for given dir

From: Justin Tobler <jltobler@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 20, 2025, 19:05 UTC
Message-ID: <pyt5nc2v25oarqmuxld4nrknmsomjnyooj25ffjetcue5zq7xi@vglcil42as5a>
In-Reply-To: <20251119-kn-alternate-ref-dir-v1-1-4cf4a94c8bed@gmail.com>

On 25/11/19 10:48PM, Karthik Nayak wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> The refs subsystem uses the `get_main_ref_store()` to obtain the main
> ref_store for a given repository. In the upcoming patches we also want
> to create a ref_store for any given reference directory, which may exist
> in arbitrary paths. To support such behavior, extract out the core logic
> for creating out the ref_store from `get_main_ref_store()` into a new
> function `get_ref_store_for_dir()` which can provide the ref_store for a
> given (repository, directory, reference format) combination.

So when we refer to the "reference directory" in this case, we are not refering to the "refs/" or "reftable/" directories directly, but one level above that which is typically just the gitdir itself. This seems a bit awkward at first, but makes sense since, for the files backend, there may be symbolic references such as HEAD that exist outside of "refs/" which must be considered. It might be helpful to clarify this in the commit message.

Otherwise this patch looks good.

-Justin