Branches, tags and releases
Ref-only pushes from the API, tags that live only in git, and releases that live only in rows.
Branches from the API
Creating or deleting a branch in the web app is a ref-only push: one transition through commitPush with an empty pack, since every commit a branch can point at is already in the log (ADR 0028).
- Create:
refs/heads/<name>from the zero oid to an existing commit (a branch, tag or sha; the default branch if none given). - Delete: from the tip it just read to the zero oid. If someone pushed in between, the compare-and-swap refuses with a conflict. Nothing is lost.
Names are checked with git check-ref-format; a leading - and HEAD are refused. The API refuses to delete the default branch or any branch an open pull request uses. git push --delete still can; only the API is careful.
Tags live in git
A tag is a ref, refs/tags/<name>, and nothing else (ADR 0024). There is no tag table: the list comes from for-each-ref on the cache. A table would be a second copy that git push --tags bypasses.
Releases live in rows
A release is a release row keyed by (repositoryId, tagName): notes, draft and prerelease flags, author. It stores no commit: each read looks the tag up in git, so a release follows a moved tag, and one whose tag was deleted reports commitSha: null.
Creating a release for a tag that does not exist creates an annotated tag (dated today, tagged by the requester) through commitPush, with a pack holding only the tag object. "Latest" is computed: the most recently published release that is neither a draft nor a prerelease. Deleting a release keeps the tag.
Release assets
Files attached to a release live in the bucket under release-assets/<repositoryId>/<releaseId>/<assetId>, one release_asset row each, streamed through the API (never presigned URLs; a self-hosted bucket is often reachable only from the API). Uploads reserve quota first; see Storage and quotas.