Re: [PATCH v3 3/3] Add documentation for virtual repositories

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:10, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

Like chroots, there is a sticky point with symbolic links. What should
"refs/virtual/repo1/HEAD" have in it? Either:

 ref: refs/virtual/repo1/refs/heads/master

...

If the former, then we will have to make sure the ref is inside our
prefix, and strip it out.

Yes. And if its outside of our chroot space, we have to hide the
symbolic reference as though it is broken. This is fairly simple since
symbolic references are supposed to be "absolute", we can do a quick
prefix test and either strip the prefix on read (or add it on write),
or pretend like the reference is broken and hide it if its outside the
prefix.

If the latter, then you will get different
results for:

 git show refs/virtual/repo1/HEAD

versus

 GIT_REF_PREFIX=refs/virtual/repo1 git show HEAD

which I think is a bad thing.

Yes, I agree, this would be bad. Hence we should store the real path
in the symbolic reference, but strip/add the prefix when
GIT_REF_PREFIX is set.

-- 
Shawn.