Re: [PATCH v2 2/6] Documentation/git-update-ref.txt: remove safety paragraphs
From: karthik nayak <hidden>
Date: 2024-10-20 11:13:22
kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com writes:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <redacted> Remove paragraphs which explain that using this command is safer than echoing the branch name into `HEAD`. These paragraphs have been part of the documentation since the documentation was created in 129056370ab (Add missing documentation., 2005-10-04), back when the command synopsis was a lot simpler: `git-update-ref` <ref> <newvalue> [<oldvalue>] These paragraphs don’t interrupt the flow of the document on that revision since it is at the end. Now though it is placed after the description of `--no-deref` and before `-d` and `--stdin`. Covering all the options is more generally interesting than a safety note about a naïve `HEAD` management. Such a safety warning is also much less relevant now, considering that everyone who isn’t intentionally poking at the internal implementation is using porcelain commands to manage `HEAD`. Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <redacted> --- Documentation/git-update-ref.txt | 15 --------------- 1 file changed, 15 deletions(-)diff --git a/Documentation/git-update-ref.txt b/Documentation/git-update-ref.txt index fe5967234e9..ec268b1426d 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-update-ref.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-update-ref.txt@@ -40,21 +40,6 @@ somewhere else with a regular filename). If --no-deref is given, <ref> itself is overwritten, rather than the result of following the symbolic pointers. -In general, using - - git update-ref HEAD "$head" - -should be a _lot_ safer than doing - - echo "$head" > "$GIT_DIR/HEAD" - -both from a symlink following standpoint *and* an error checking -standpoint. The "refs/" rule for symlinks means that symlinks -that point to "outside" the tree are safe: they'll be followed -for reading but not for writing (so we'll never write through a -ref symlink to some other tree, if you have copied a whole -archive by creating a symlink tree). -
In the new reftable backend, HEAD would simply exist as a placeholder. So either we do as you did and remove this entirely or double down to say that writing to HEAD directly is not supported. I don't have a preference here, so this looks good!
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