From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:23:09 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/2] rebase: skip branch symref aliases
Message-ID: <xmqqpl07fb1u.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <8631114b-aa6f-446e-9710-92c400320eac@gmail.com>

Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:

>> But stepping back a bit, is having a HEAD that is a symref and
>> points outside "refs/heads/" an invalid state?  Why are we catering
>> to such a configuration to begin with?
>
> We allow HEAD to point to anything below "refs/" - see e9cc02f0e4 
> (symbolic-ref: allow refs/<whatever> in HEAD, 2009-02-13).

But that was about a low level mechanism that must be more lenient
to be usable as repair tools to recover from such a broken state,
no?  I thought the end-user facing commands like "git checkout" have
been tightened long ago to stop users from getting into a situation
that needs repairing in the first place.  And that was why I asked.