Subject: Re: Branch names with slashes

From: Michael Haggerty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:41:00 +0100

On 12/15/2011 09:40 PM, Neal Kreitzinger wrote:
> On 12/14/2011 4:17 AM, Leonardo Kim wrote:
>> Branch names can contain slashes, so we can use 'development/foo' as
>> a branch name. If I choose 'development' as a branch name, it doesn't
>> work. There is a directory named development at '.git/refs/heads'
>> directory. So we cannot create a file named development for
>> 'refs/heads/development'.
>>
>> An error message may occurs like below. Unfortunately, It is not of
>> help to me. 'error: 'refs/heads/development/foo' exists; cannot
>> create 'refs/heads/development'.
>>
>> I think that dealing with a file system and an error message above is
>> not sufficient for a novice like me. I hope that it should be
>> improved.
>>
> FYI, We also use slashes in our branchnames to leverage some of the
> benefits of a path-like namespace like pattern matching and the logical
> expression of hierarchies using descriptive compound names. (We use git
> 1.7.1 on linux.) Here's something to keep in mind: You have to plan
> (think ahead) for your naming conventions so that the namespaces will
> maintain uniqueness at a peer level over time that cannot be confused as
> subdirs under .git/refs/heads. For example:
> 
> branchnames:
> /mysystem/generic
> /mysystem/generic/project1
> 
> will not work because /mysystem/generic appears to be a parent dir to
> /mysystem/generic/project1 under .git/refs/heads.  The solution is:
> 
> /mysystem/generic/base
> /mysystem/generic/project1
> 
> these branches can coexist because they are unique without one appearing
> to be a parent dir of the other.  IOW, their namespaces are peers in
> their entirety. To carry the example a little further,
> 
> /mysystem/generic/project1/part2
> will not work because once again it appears to be a subdir of an
> existing branchname (ref).  However,
> /mysystem/generic/project1-part2
> will work.
> 
> I think the reason for this is that if you look at .git/refs/heads you
> will see that these slash delimited branch names are actually stored as
> subdirs in the filesystem sense.  Therefore, git will get confused and
> error out as it tries to find branchnames that are not entirely unique
> by their full path namespace under .git/refs/heads because a branch
> namespace that is a prefix (in the filesystem sense) of another branch
> name would occupy the same path under .git/refs/heads without being
> distinguishable as unique, and vice versa.

Everything that you say is correct.  And it is known, at least to a few
git implementers (i.e., not a bug but a conscious design decision).  For
example, the function is_refname_available() is used explicitly to
prevent refnames that conflict in the way that you describe *even if*
the refnames in question are packed and therefore not 1:1 with
filesystem paths.  This is all a limitation of the fact that references
*can* be represented by files and therefore they inherit the filesystem
constraint that a file and subdirectory within a single parent directory
cannot have the same name.

I don't believe that it would be possible to relax this limitations
without at least a little breakage of backwards compatibility.

What is the bottom line?  Feel free to submit patches to improve the
documentation or error reporting.  But I doubt that the underlying
limitation will be removed.

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
[email-masked]
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/