From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2017 18:56:10 GMT
Subject: Re: git gc seems to break --symbolic-full-name
Message-ID: <xmqqbmodhb5h.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <234492d7-7fd6-f847-8b85-010732ff43b6@list.ru>

Stas Sergeev <stsp@list.ru> writes:

> I do the following:
>
> $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel
> refs/heads/devel
> $ ls -l .git/`git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel`
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 stas stas 41 июл 21 15:05 .git/refs/heads/devel
>
> This is fine. But after git gc:
>
> $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel
> refs/heads/devel
> $ LC_ALL=C ls -l .git/`git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel`
> ls: cannot access '.git/refs/heads/devel': No such file or directory

This is expected, and in the modern world (like, after year 2007),
a refname "refs/heads/foo" does *not* mean that there is a file
with such a path under .git/ directory.  "rev-parse" does not return
any "path" in the filesystem sense.

See "git pack-refs --help", and depending on what you want to learn
about the ref in question, perhaps "git show-ref refs/heads/devel"
is what you want.