Re: [PATCH] symbolic-ref: check format of given reference

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 10:10:14AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

For that matter, shouldn't symbolic-ref be forbidden to point
outside refs/heads/, not just restricted in refs/ like the current
code does?

We tried that already but reverted it due to topgit. See:

    commit e9cc02f0e41fd5d2f51e3c3f2b4f8cfa9e434432
    Author: Jeff King [off-list ref]
    Date:   Fri Feb 13 13:26:09 2009 -0500

        symbolic-ref: allow refs/<whatever> in HEAD

        Commit afe5d3d5 introduced a safety valve to symbolic-ref to
        disallow installing an invalid HEAD. It was accompanied by
        b229d18a, which changed validate_headref to require that
        HEAD contain a pointer to refs/heads/ instead of just refs/.
        Therefore, the safety valve also checked for refs/heads/.

        As it turns out, topgit is using refs/top-bases/ in HEAD,
        leading us to re-loosen (at least temporarily) the
        validate_headref check made in b229d18a. This patch does the
        corresponding loosening for the symbolic-ref safety valve,
        so that the two are in agreement once more.

-Peff