Volume XXII, number 280Wednesday, October 7, 2026Latest message 1 hour ago

The Git List

News and archive of git@vger.kernel.org, since April 2005

patchdocs: correct information about reftable

3 messages between Apr 2, 2026 and Apr 8, 2026, from brian m. carlson, Patrick Steinhardt, Junio C Hamano.

Plain Markdown or JSON for tools and agents. Diffs are folded; open one to read it.

brian m. carlsonApr 2, 2026, 22:42 UTC on lore

Our description of the reftable format is that it is experimental and subject to change, but that is no longer true. Remove this statement so as not to mislead users.

In addition, the documentation says that the files format is the default, but that is not true if breaking changes mode is on. Correct this information with a conditional.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
---
Someone who was asking a question on the list pointed out that the docs
still said reftable was experimental and I said I'd send a patch to fix
that, so here it is.

Moreover, I think the with-breaking-changes item is helpful for us to find all the places that we'll need to change for Git 3.0, in addition to our goal of having strictly accurate documentation.

 Documentation/ref-storage-format.adoc | 11 ++++++++---
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
Show changes to Documentation/ref-storage-format.adoc +8 −3
diff --git a/Documentation/ref-storage-format.adoc b/Documentation/ref-storage-format.adoc
index 6a8db4712b..c5e29ec831 100644
--- a/Documentation/ref-storage-format.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/ref-storage-format.adoc
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
-`files`;; for loose files with packed-refs. This is the default.
-`reftable`;; for the reftable format. This format is experimental and its
-  internals are subject to change.
+`files`;; for loose files with packed-refs.
+ifndef::with-breaking-changes[]
+	This is the default.
+endif::with-breaking-changes[]
+`reftable`;; for the reftable format.
+ifdef::with-breaking-changes[]
+	This is the default.
+endif::with-breaking-changes[]
Patrick SteinhardtApr 8, 2026, 06:51 UTC in reply to brian m. carlson on lore

Re: [PATCH] docs: correct information about reftable

On Thu, Apr 02, 2026 at 10:42:41PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> Our description of the reftable format is that it is experimental and
> subject to change, but that is no longer true.  Remove this statement so
> as not to mislead users.
> 
> In addition, the documentation says that the files format is the
> default, but that is not true if breaking changes mode is on.  Correct
> this information with a conditional.
Makes sense to me, thanks!
Patrick
Junio C HamanoApr 8, 2026, 14:20 UTC in reply to Patrick Steinhardt on lore

Re: [PATCH] docs: correct information about reftable

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
Show 12 quoted lines
> On Thu, Apr 02, 2026 at 10:42:41PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
>> Our description of the reftable format is that it is experimental and
>> subject to change, but that is no longer true.  Remove this statement so
>> as not to mislead users.
>> 
>> In addition, the documentation says that the files format is the
>> default, but that is not true if breaking changes mode is on.  Correct
>> this information with a conditional.
>
> Makes sense to me, thanks!
>
> Patrick

Thanks for this ack---the patch message somehow escaped from my radar. Will apply.

Back to recent threads