Summary

Weeks 3 and 4 were about shifting focus, consolidating features, and laying the groundwork for discussions on the future of git refs list.

What I Worked On

Week 2 ended with an open question: Should git refs list use pattern matching behavior from show-ref, for-each-ref, or support both?

As per my mentor’s suggestion, I sent an RFC to the Git mailing list. Junio responded, pointing out that show-ref’s only unique value --verify is already handled well by rev-parse. This prompted us to drop show-ref consolidation altogether and shift focus to for-each-ref.

Over the last two weeks, I consolidated the for-each-ref command into git refs list, carrying over its options and flags as-is. Since my project also includes identifying unneeded features and potential improvements, I asked my mentors whether we should modify anything up front. Their advice was to first ensure full feature parity with for-each-ref, send an RFC, and discuss changes with the broader community later.

For testing, I ran into an interesting problem. for-each-ref already has an extensive test suite with 400+ tests. Duplicating all of those with a new command name would be wasteful and hard to maintain. So instead, we decided to reuse the existing t/t6300-for-each-ref.sh tests inside a new test file (t/t1461-refs-list.sh) by overriding the GIT_REFS_LIST_CMD variable to run tests against git refs list.

For documentation, I temporarily reused parts of for-each-ref’s doc file. Since the command’s behavior isn’t finalized yet, this makes it easier to keep docs in sync. Once the command’s final design is agreed upon, I plan to revisit the docs to better reflect what git refs list actually does.

Challenges

The biggest challenge in this cycle was the sudden change of direction: dropping show-ref after it was already implemented. It also took time and care to ensure we kept the project aligned with upstream expectations and community feedback.

What’s Next

In the coming weeks, I plan to:

  • Follow up on mailing list feedback.
  • Make necessary adjustments to the code and tests based on the feedback.
  • Start exploring small usability improvements if the scope allows.

Most importantly, the consensus we reach on how to shape git refs list will likely influence how we approach consolidating the rest of the ref-related commands. So, next week will probably involve minor code changes but major community discussion and alignment on direction.

Till the next check-in;)