Ronnie Sahlberg authored Sep 03, 2014 and Junio C Hamano committed Oct 15, 2014

We currently do not handle badly named refs well:

  $ cp .git/refs/heads/master .git/refs/heads/master.....@\*@\\.
  $ git branch
    fatal: Reference has invalid format: 'refs/heads/master.....@*@\.'
  $ git branch -D master.....@\*@\\.
    error: branch 'master.....@*@\.' not found.

Users cannot recover from a badly named ref without manually finding
and deleting the loose ref file or appropriate line in packed-refs.
Making that easier will make it easier to tweak the ref naming rules
in the future, for example to forbid shell metacharacters like '`'
and '"', without putting people in a state that is hard to get out of.

So allow "branch --list" to show these refs and allow "branch -d/-D"
and "update-ref -d" to delete them.  Other commands (for example to
rename refs) will continue to not handle these refs but can be changed
in later patches.

Details:

In resolving functions, refuse to resolve refs that don't pass the
git-check-ref-format(1) check unless the new RESOLVE_REF_ALLOW_BAD_NAME
flag is passed.  Even with RESOLVE_REF_ALLOW_BAD_NAME, refuse to
resolve refs that escape the refs/ directory and do not match the
pattern [A-Z_]* (think "HEAD" and "MERGE_HEAD").

In locking functions, refuse to act on badly named refs unless they
are being deleted and either are in the refs/ directory or match [A-Z_]*.

Just like other invalid refs, flag resolved, badly named refs with the
REF_ISBROKEN flag, treat them as resolving to null_sha1, and skip them
in all iteration functions except for for_each_rawref.

Flag badly named refs (but not symrefs pointing to badly named refs)
with a REF_BAD_NAME flag to make it easier for future callers to
notice and handle them specially.  For example, in a later patch
for-each-ref will use this flag to detect refs whose names can confuse
callers parsing for-each-ref output.

In the transaction API, refuse to create or update badly named refs,
but allow deleting them (unless they try to escape refs/ and don't match
[A-Z_]*).

Signed-off-by: Ronnie Sahlberg <sahlberg@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>