Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/5] make room for "special ref"

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2023 09:56:07 +0100

On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:32:40PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Patrick's reftable work is progressing nicely and wants to establish
> "special ref" as a phrase with some defined meaning that is somewhat
> different from a mere "pseudo ref".
> 
> A pseudo ref is merely a normal ref with a funny naming convention,
> i.e., being outside the refs/ hierarchy and has names with all
> uppercase letters (or an underscore).  But there truly are refs that
> are more than that.  For example, FETCH_HEAD currently stores not
> just a single object name, but can and is used to store multiple
> object names, each with annotations to record where they came from.
> There indeed may be a need to introduce a new term to refer to such
> "special refs".
> 
> Existing documentation, however, uses "special ref" to refer to
> pseudo refs without any "special" property, like FETCH_HEAD does.
> 
> This series merely corrects such existing uses of the word, to make
> room for Patrick's series to introduce (and formally define in the
> glossary) "special refs".

Thanks for helping out with this effort and kicking off the discussion,
I highly appreciate it!

Patrick

> Junio C Hamano (5):
>   git.txt: HEAD is not that special
>   git-bisect.txt: BISECT_HEAD is not that special
>   refs.h: HEAD is not that special
>   docs: AUTO_MERGE is not that special
>   docs: MERGE_AUTOSTASH is not that special
> 
>  Documentation/git-bisect.txt    | 2 +-
>  Documentation/git-diff.txt      | 2 +-
>  Documentation/git-merge.txt     | 2 +-
>  Documentation/git.txt           | 7 ++++---
>  Documentation/merge-options.txt | 2 +-
>  Documentation/user-manual.txt   | 2 +-
>  refs.h                          | 2 +-
>  7 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
> 
> -- 
> 2.43.0-76-g1a87c842ec
>