checkout -b <name>: correctly detect existing branch

When create a new branch, we fed "refs/heads/<proposed name>" as a string
to get_sha1() and expected it to fail when a branch already exists.

The right way to check if a ref exists is to check with resolve_ref().

A naïve solution that might appear attractive but does not work is to
forbid slashes in get_describe_name() but that will not work. A describe
name is is in the form of "ANYTHING-g<short sha1>", and that ANYTHING part
comes from a original tag name used in the repository the user ran the
describe command. A sick user could have a confusing hierarchical tag
whose name is "refs/heads/foobar" (stored as refs/tags/refs/heads/foobar")
to generate a describe name "refs/heads/foobar-6-g02ac983", and we should
be able to use that name to refer to the object whose name is 02ac983.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/refs.c b/refs.c
index 6f486ae62d..92cd0d14c3 100644
--- a/refs.c
+++ b/refs.c
@@ -1732,6 +1732,12 @@ int update_ref(const char *action, const char *refname,
 	return 0;
 }
 
+int ref_exists(char *refname)
+{
+	unsigned char sha1[20];
+	return !!resolve_ref(refname, sha1, 1, NULL);
+}
+
 struct ref *find_ref_by_name(const struct ref *list, const char *name)
 {
 	for ( ; list; list = list->next)