Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] add a --delete option to git push

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:05:48PM -0700, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

> Those new to git have a hard time learning how to delete a remote
> ref. This makes it easier for them to find out how by providing a
> flag to git push.

Should this also impact refs read from the config? E.g., if I do "git
push --delete" will it try to impact matching refs (which is almost
certainly a mistake), or refs I have in my remote.$X.push (which is
probably also a mistake)?

>From reading your patch, it looks like it just touches the command-line.
I think that's the right thing to do, but I think it makes sense to
think half a second to make sure.

And with the way you have it, "git push --delete" will silently ignore
the --delete and push configured refspecs. Probably it should say
"--delete is useless without refspecs on the command line".

>     Currently `git push --delete master:master` results in a somewhat
>     cryptic error message. It seems unlikely however, that those new
>     to git would use the 'old:new' notation, so I haven't bothered
>     guarding against it and settled for documenting it.

It seems like it would be simple enough to just check whether the
refspec contains a colon; if so, silently leave it alone. That could
also protect configured refspecs, as mentioned above, but I wouldn't
rule out somebody have a single-name refspec in their config (in fact, I
think "remote.$X.push = HEAD" is reasonable -- should that delete the
HEAD on "git push --delete"?).

> +--delete::
> +    Delete the specified refs. Prefixes all refs with ':' to tell the
> +    push machinery to delete the specified ref. As such, the refs
> +    that are to be deleted should not contain a ':' specifier.
> +

This impacts _all_ refspecs. Remember that we can have multiple refspecs
on the command-line. So I can "move" a ref remotely with:

  git push :old-name old-name:new-name

but I can't do:

  git push --delete old-name old-name:new-name

Ignoring colon-less refspecs would make that work, but would not allow
the similar:

  # branch has already been renamed to new-name locally
  git push --delete old-name new-name

So maybe it would make more sense for it to be "--delete <ref>" and
impact only a single ref. The simple case of "git push --delete foo"
would remain unchanged.

The counter-argument is that "--delete" does not necessarily need to be
as powerful as the ":ref" syntax, but I don't see the downside in making
it so.

-Peff