What exactly is the meaning of refs in the label field in the bitbucket access logs?

[Vishal K.S]

I understand that refs is present for all the operations, whether it is clone, pull, push or shallow clone. But when does it exactly appear, and what is the meaning of "refs" exactly in all the above mentioned cases?

As explained in https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserverkb/how-to-read-the-bitbucket-server-log-formats-779171668.html, it explains that refs means that the server avoids fetching redundant data, but what would it mean for clones and pushes?

[Baskar Annamalai]

Hi @Vishal K.S

The ref is an indirect way of referring to a commit. You can think of it as a user-friendly alias for a commit hash. The bare repository used by Bitbucket Server stored the data at {{Bitbucket_Home/shared/data/repositories/#/refs}}. In other words, refs are cache stored for Git transaction, similar to the buffer memory. This would allow the client to clone faster without the need of repository being packed everytime there is a need for Git transaction. The ref will be removed/altered based on the repository usage.

Regards.