On Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 01:12:33PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Patrick Steinhardt [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Let's address this mess and return the pseudoref terminology back to its
original intent: a ref that sometimes behave like a ref, but which isn't
really a ref because it gets written to the filesystem directly. Or in
other words, let's redefine pseudorefs to match the current definition
of special refs. As special refs and pseudorefs are now the same per
definition, we can drop the "special refs" term again. It's not exposed
to our users and thus they wouldn't ever encounter that term anyway.

Good intentions.

I do not agree with "the ones at the root should not be special" at
all, though.  We need to reject names like 'config' somehow, as long
as there are users who use files backend.

Oh, yes, I totally agree and thought I'd mentioned this in the message.
But it seems like I only mention this in a subsequent message. Let me
add a hint to the commit message that mentions that a subsequent commit
will clearly define "root refs".

In any case, root refs should not be special regarding their behaviour,
but should have a strict naming schema:

    - Only uppercase letters or underscores.

    - Must end with "_HEAD" or be called "HEAD".

    - There is an exhaustive list of legacy root refs that don't conform
      to this naming schema, like "AUTO_MERGE". This list shall not be
      extended in the future.

This explanation is added in patch 3.

Patrick