Re: RefTree: Alternate ref backend

[Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org> writes:
>
>>> But really, aside from slightly helping
>>> disambiguate references from paths in the command line, what is it good
>>> for?
>>
>> Nothing really; today refs/ prefix is used to encourage to the tools
>> that you really meant refs/heads/master and not
>> refs/heads/heads/master or some other crazy construct. You can thank
>> the DWIMery inside the ref rev parse logic for needing this.
>
> Aren't you two forgetting one minor thing, though?
>
> A layout without refs/, i.e. $GIT_DIR/{heads,tags,...}, will force
> us to keep track of where the tips of histories are anchored for
> reachability purposes, every time you would add a new hierarchy
> (e.g. $GIT_DIR/changes)--and those unfortunate souls who run a
> slightly older version of Git that is unaware of 'changes' hierarchy
> would weep after running "git gc", no?

You still store them under refs/

All of the code that is handed a ref name knows its a ref name and not
a sha-1 object name in the objects directory.

The catch is a few things accept HEAD, MERGE_HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, etc.
Those have to be handled even though they aren't in the refs/
directory.