From f570bd91b3b2c6c5ef2035e3ce3ed76e613e74a7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Patrick Steinhardt Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:26:08 +0200 Subject: refs/files: deprecate writing symrefs as symbolic links The "files" backend has the ability to store symbolic refs as symbolic links, which can be configured via "core.preferSymlinkRefs". This feature stems back from the early days: the initial implementation of symbolic refs used symlinks exclusively. The symref format was only introduced in 9b143c6e15 (Teach update-ref about a symbolic ref stored in a textfile., 2005-09-25) and made the default in 9f0bb90d16 (core.prefersymlinkrefs: use symlinks for .git/HEAD, 2006-05-02). This is all about 20 years ago, and there are no known reasons nowadays why one would want to use symlinks instead of symrefs. Mark the feature for deprecation in Git 3.0. Note that this only deprecates _writing_ symrefs as symbolic links. Reading such symrefs is still supported for now. Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- refs/files-backend.c | 19 +++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) (limited to 'refs/files-backend.c') diff --git a/refs/files-backend.c b/refs/files-backend.c index 5ddf418b18..2c48526ef2 100644 --- a/refs/files-backend.c +++ b/refs/files-backend.c @@ -2113,20 +2113,35 @@ static int commit_ref_update(struct files_ref_store *refs, return 0; } -#ifdef NO_SYMLINK_HEAD +#if defined(NO_SYMLINK_HEAD) || defined(WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES) #define create_ref_symlink(a, b) (-1) #else static int create_ref_symlink(struct ref_lock *lock, const char *target) { + static int warn_once = 1; + char *ref_path; int ret = -1; - char *ref_path = get_locked_file_path(&lock->lk); + ref_path = get_locked_file_path(&lock->lk); unlink(ref_path); ret = symlink(target, ref_path); free(ref_path); if (ret) fprintf(stderr, "no symlink - falling back to symbolic ref\n"); + + if (warn_once) + warning(_("'core.preferSymlinkRefs=true' is nominated for removal.\n" + "hint: The use of symbolic links for symbolic refs is deprecated\n" + "hint: and will be removed in Git 3.0. The configuration that\n" + "hint: tells Git to use them is thus going away. You can unset\n" + "hint: it with:\n" + "hint:\n" + "hint:\tgit config unset core.preferSymlinkRefs\n" + "hint:\n" + "hint: Git will then use the textual symref format instead.")); + warn_once = 0; + return ret; } #endif -- cgit v1.2.3