short SHA value format in repo manifests

[Igor Krymgand]

greetings

I am trying to use short SHA values (8 digits) as a revision
 <extend-project name="PROJ_AAA" revision="c7cb79bd" />

however when running repo sync i get the following error 
fetching:  0% (0/1) 0:00 | 1 job | 0:00 PROJ_AAA @ PROJ_AAA fatal: couldn't find remote ref refs/heads/9dcb10d30d

Based on the error - looks like short SHA value was mistakenly considered by repo as a branch name. Looking full sha value works fine.
Ara short SHA supported by repo? is there a way to explicitly indicate to repo that the revision is SHA and not branch?

Thanks
Igor

[mfick]

On Thursday, August 7, 2025 at 12:56:31 PM UTC-6 igor.k...@gmail.com wrote:

greetings

I am trying to use short SHA values (8 digits) as a revision
 <extend-project name="PROJ_AAA" revision="c7cb79bd" />

Short shas are generally meant for humans, not scripts, probably best to avoid doing this.

 

however when running repo sync i get the following error 
fetching:  0% (0/1) 0:00 | 1 job | 0:00 PROJ_AAA @ PROJ_AAA fatal: couldn't find remote ref refs/heads/9dcb10d30d

Based on the error - looks like short SHA value was mistakenly considered by repo as a branch name. Looking full sha value works fine.
Ara short SHA supported by repo? is there a way to explicitly indicate to repo that the revision is SHA and not branch?

How do you propose that repo know whether you mean a short sha or a branch, as all sha1s are legally also branch (and tag) names.

 

-Martin

[Igor Krymgand]

Thanks Martin.
Does it mean that short sha is not supported?

how does repo currently identify long sha? long sha works and are not misinterpreted as branches....

for the future I can think of helper prefix. Something like  revision="sha/12345678"

Best

Igor

[Igor Krymgand]

or using ^0 postfix to sha value as done in git ....

[mfick]

On Thursday, August 7, 2025 at 1:45:43 PM UTC-6 igor.k...@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks Martin.
Does it mean that short sha is not supported?

how does repo currently identify long sha? long sha works and are not misinterpreted as branches....

I believe most tools explicitly assume that a 40 character hex string, which is also a legal branch name, is a SHA1. Since this is not great, as it could collide with a real branch name which happens to be 40 characters long, I suspect that no one wants to expand this to create more collisions.

for the future I can think of helper prefix. Something like  revision="sha/12345678"

This suffers the same problem, it is a legal branch name,

-Martin 

[Igor Krymgand]

"sha:12345" - this is illegal branch name ... it is not about the syntax - it is about the approach...u can find appropriate syntax if u want

[mfick]

On Thursday, August 7, 2025 at 2:16:15 PM UTC-6 igor.k...@gmail.com wrote:

"sha:12345" - this is illegal branch name ... it is not about the syntax - it is about the approach...u can find appropriate syntax if u want

Good point, my bad. FYI, I am not a repo dev, I'm just trying to help you come up with a proposal that will be easy to implement.

I still think it is a bad idea to use short shas in a manifest, it's a bit like using tinyurls, or a search statement,

-Martin

[Igor Krymgand]

thanks Martin.

in my case - i get short SHAs as an input ... so it it what it is and I cannot change it ... need to find a way to build a manifest out of short SHAs....

[Kai Lei]

based on current code, it can't support short commit id, you might need to update multiple source files like the following to support "sha:short_commit_id"

git_config.py：

ID_RE = re.compile(r"^[0-9a-f]{40}$")
def IsId(rev):
    return ID_RE.match(rev)

project.py：

is_sha1 = bool(IsId(self.revisionExpr))

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[Igor Krymgand]

thanks Kai

I found this code too, I think the possible fix may not be too complicated 

1. update IsID(rev)   implementation to parse short shas , I would choose original git syntax for sha values with ^0 postfix like abcd123^0
    I have a strong feeling that nothing else will be needed as now sha values will look like <value> ^0  which is natively acceptable by git....

2. If the above is not enough then maybe update ToLocal implementation in git_config.py to strip ^0 from the rev can complement the solution.

I may try the above locally ....