From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:26:57 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/2] rebase: skip branch symref aliases
Message-ID: <xmqqwludan2m.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <61291144-60da-4e37-83ef-fe09e91c4f51@gmail.com>

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

>> 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?
>
> It checks the new value of HEAD, not the old one so I don't think so. 
> The commit message talks about topgit using "git symbolic-ref" to set 
> head outside "refs/heads/" - peff had previously tried to tighten it to 
> reject non-branch refs but that broke topgit. I've just had a quick look 
> at the topgit code and still sets HEAD to point to "refs/top-bases/..." 
> by default[1], although there are plans to start using 
> "refs/heads/{top-bases}/..." instead.

Ah, that name vaguely rings a bell.  Is it still in use, and now
they prevent us from forbidding funny characters like {} in the
refname?  Sigh...

> ... It 
> appears topgit's rebase command is built around "git rebase"[2] so I 
> think we need to continue to support rebasing a non-branch HEAD.

Sigh, again, but OK.

Thanks.