Re: [PATCH] git-send-pack: don't consider branch lagging behind as errors.

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 03:52:00PM +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote:

> >   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/73038/focus=73186
> [...]
> >   - should stale branches be shown without -v?
> 
>   I believe so, it's valuable information. It's as valuable as what you
> get after a git fetch nowadays (like branches have diverged n and m
> commits each or similar) But oh well… I don't care that much.

If you read the beginning of that thread, the original impetus was
people cloning repos that had dozens of branches, then doing a push.
If they hadn't recently done a fetch, they got dozens of lines of
"rejected".

> >   - calling ref_newer here is inefficient, since we have already called
> >     it in the other direction. We should probably do the traversal once
> >     in such a way as to find out which ref is newer (or if it is
> >     indeterminate).
> 
>   Well, true, though I don't expect people to have tons of local
> branches that match a refspec _and_ lag behind. I suspect this is a very
> minor performance loss.

Yeah, maybe it is not worth worrying about; I haven't actually measured
any performance issue. I'll try to look and see how painful it is to
combine the traversals.

> >   - there is a possible danger with "git push -f", in that you force
> >     both rejected branches as well as stale branches. Junio and I
>   Well afaict this is a separate issue, as we're (with such a patch)
> only changing what gets printed on the console, not the internal
> behavior. So solving this second issue should not really be a
> precondition to the inclusion of such a patch.

It is a separate issue, but it is exacerbated by hiding stale refs.
Imagine:

$ git push
To /path/to/repo
   ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast forward)

$ git push -f
To /path/to/repo
   + 0abfa88...c1ed93b master -> master (forced update)
   + 0329485...3498576 stale_branch -> stale_branch (forced update)

I think that is a nasty surprise to spring on an unsuspecting user.
Another solution might be "-f" not pushing rewound branches, but then we
need a way to specify "no, really, push this rewound branch". Perhaps
"-f -f"?

>   Please please please do :)
>   The exit 1 of git-push is really annoying me these days.

OK, I will try to take a look in the next few days.

-Peff