Re: [PATCH v3 5/6] transport-helper.c::push_refs(): ignore helper-reported status if ref is not to be pushed

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 06:01:13PM +0800, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:

> > It seems like this should be checking for REF_STATUS_NONE explicitly
> > instead of trying to enumerate the reasons we might not have tried to
> > push. Shouldn't helpers _only_ be pushing REF_STATUS_NONE refs?
> >
> > I think right now the two cases are equivalent, since non-ff and
> > uptodate are the only two states set before the helper is invoked. But
> > we have discussed in the past (and I still have a patch floating around
> > for) a REF_STATUS_REWIND which would treat strict rewinds differently
> > (silently ignoring them instead of making an error). Explicitly checking
> > REF_STATUS_NONE future-proofs against new states being added.
> 
> I'm not really sure if this is true (ie. that if status is not non-ff
> or uptodate, then it is REF_STATUS_NONE), but we could step around this

Well, consider it this way. If it's _not_ REF_STATUS_NONE, then what is
it, and what does it mean to be overwriting it?

Maybe I am misunderstanding the problem the patch is addressing, but the
point of these REF_STATUS feels was to act as a small state machine.
Everything starts as NONE, and then:

  - we compare locally against remote refs. We may transition:
      NONE -> UPTODATE
      NONE -> REJECT_NONFASTFORWARD
      NONE -> REJECT_NODELETE

  - we send the push list
      NONE -> EXPECTING_REPORT (if the remote supports individual status)
      NONE -> OK (otherwise)

  - we get back status responses
      EXPECTING_REPORT -> OK
      EXPECTING_REPORT -> REMOTE_REJECT

I haven't looked closely at the new transport helper code, but I would
think it should stick more or less to those transitions. The exception
would be that some transports don't necessarily handle EXPECTING_REPORT
in the same way, and may transition directly from NONE to
OK/REMOTE_REJECT.

So offhand, I would say that your list should also probably include
REJECT_NODELETE. However, I think that status is just for old servers
which didn't support the delete-refs protocol extension. So presumably
that is none of the new helpers, as they all post-date the addition of
that feature by quite a few years.

> by introducing a property, say, ref->should_push, that is set to 1,
> after all the vetting has been carried out and just before we talk to
> the server.

I'd rather not introduce new state. The point of the status flag was to
encapsulate all of that information, and a new state variable just seems
like introducing extra complexity. If we are not in the NONE state, I
don't see why we would tell the helper about a ref at all.

-Peff