Re: [PATCH] tag -d: print sha1 of deleted tag

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 01:23:43PM +0100, Michael J Gruber wrote:

> Print the sha1 of the deleted tag (in addition to the tag name) so that
> one can easily recreate a mistakenly deleted tag:
> 
> git tag -d tagname
> Deleted tag 'tagname' DEADBEEF
> git tag 'tagname' DEADBEEF # for lightweight tags
> git update-ref refs/tags/'tagname' DEADBEEF # for annotated tags

I think this is a good idea, and we already do the same for branch
deletion.

I'm not sure your example is right. If "tag -d" always prints out the
sha1 in the tag ref, can't you just use "git tag 'tagname' DEADBEEF" to
recreate both lightweight and annotated tags? That is, making a
lightweight tag of an annotated tag's sha1 should just recreate the
original annotated tag.

That being said, I am not a fan of the cut-and-paste format. This is not
something that happens so frequently that I think we need to go out of
our way to save some typing. And for a user seeing this message for the
first time:

  1. It is not immediately obvious to a user seeing this message
     for this first time exactly what the trailing sha1 means. We
     already had this discussion with "git branch -d" and decided
     that "(was DEADBEEF)" was more readable.

  2. Even if they know what it means, it is not immediately obvious that
     the error line is meant to be cut-and-pasted. If you are going to
     give something to cut-and-paste, I think you are better off making
     it obvious, like:

        Deleted tag 'foo'; you can recreate it with

           git tag 'foo' DEADBEEF

     Of course that is painfully long for a message that is meant to be
     a "just in case" notification of a successful command (I can see it
     more for an actual error, where git is telling you "I couldn't do
     what you wanted, but you might try running this command first").

-Peff