On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 05:08:03AM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

Thus nobody should actually look at the reflog entry info we return. But
we'll still put in some fake values just to be on the safe side, since
this is such a subtle and confusing interface. Likewise, we'll document
what's going on in a comment above the function declaration. If this
were a function with a lot of callers, the footgun would probably not be
worth it. But it has only ever had two callers in its 18-year existence,
and it seems unlikely to grow more. So let's hold our noses and let
users enjoy the convenience of a simulated ref@{0}.

Obviously I'm sympathetic to Patrick's position that this empty-reflog
special case is kind of gross. ;)

That's one of the reasons I split this out from patch 2; we can see
exactly what must be done to make each case work. And in fact I had
originally started to write a patch that simply changed t1508 to expect
failure. I could still be persuaded to go that way if anybody feels
strongly.

-Peff