Re: [PATCH v1 2/4] ref: add regular ref content check for files backend

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 22, 2024, 16:17 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqwmk8sfaz.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1q2gtu19.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
>
>> So any reference that contains additional data is not a proper ref and
>> thus should be warned about from my point of view. No Git tooling should
>> write them, so if something does it's a red flag to me.
>
> If you find such a file in $GIT_DIR/refs/ hierarchy, because our
> consumer side has been looser than necessary forever, and we never
> have written such a file ourselves, it is a sign that a third-party
> tool wrote it, and that the third-party tool used our reader
> implementation as the specification.  That is why I am hesitant to
> retroactively tighten the rules like this patch does.

I forgot to add my recommended course of action, without which a review is worth much less X-<.

I am OK if we tightened the rules retroactively, as long as it starts as a probing check (i.e. "info: we found an unusual thing in the wild. Please report this to us so that we can ask you for more details like how such a ref that would violate a rule that was retroactively tightened got there", not "error: malformed ref").

Thanks.