Re: Users of git-check-files?

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

> I started out to make the "-f" flag to send-file work around it, but I
> never finished that, partly because it really ends up being the same thing
> as "git-fetch-pack" in reverse, which was against the whole point of
> git-send-pack. Send-pack is meant to be an "update remote tree" thing, 
> with the assumption that the remote tree is a subset - and exactly that 
> assumption is what makes send-pack much cheaper than fetch-pack.

I think in addition to the existing ref_newer() check, which
makes sure you are advancing the remote head, not just replacing
with something unrelated, making sure that we have objects
referenced by ref->old_sha1 we obtained from the remote on our
end for all branches involved would be the only thing needed.
The latter the users should not even be able to override with
the --force flag, of course, but we would remind them to pull
from the other end first.