Re: git gc seems to break --symbolic-full-name

Stas Sergeev [off-list ref] writes:

I do the following:

$ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel
refs/heads/devel
$ ls -l .git/`git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel`
-rw-rw-r-- 1 stas stas 41 июл 21 15:05 .git/refs/heads/devel

This is fine. But after git gc:

$ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel
refs/heads/devel
$ LC_ALL=C ls -l .git/`git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name devel`
ls: cannot access '.git/refs/heads/devel': No such file or directory

This is expected, and in the modern world (like, after year 2007),
a refname "refs/heads/foo" does *not* mean that there is a file
with such a path under .git/ directory.  "rev-parse" does not return
any "path" in the filesystem sense.

See "git pack-refs --help", and depending on what you want to learn
about the ref in question, perhaps "git show-ref refs/heads/devel"
is what you want.