"Han-Wen Nienhuys via GitGitGadget" [off-list ref] writes:
I think the first part ("refs: push lock management into packed backend") is
a good improvement overall, and could be landed separately without much
tweaking.
It looked quite nice to remove more knowledge specific to the
.git/packed-refs backend from the files backend, and instead have
the files backend rely more on the backend-provided methods to make
it work together with whatever backend happens to be in use. There
were a few minor things I found puzzling, but other than that, the
two patches looked mostly sensible.