Re: [PATCH] Remove restriction on notes ref base

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

>> How about
>>
>>     refs/notes/*        refs/notes/$remote/*
>>
>> ?
>
> I was actually thinking more along the lines of "not keeping track of
> remote state at all".  We don't do that for tags either.

What would be the behavior when a remote and local notes ref have the
same name?

Tags are supposed to be universal and never change, so that doesn't
come up.  With branches and notes trees, one can impose a requirement
that the remote and local refs never have the same name (the "no
separate remotes" layout) but I think that runs into problems from
both ends:

When the remote and local notes are written by the same person, it
seems like busy work to ask that person to give different names for
the same branch at different installations.

In a distributed world where many developers might not even know
about each other's repositories, name conflicts on development
branches would seem to be inevitable.

 home> ... hack hack hack ...
 home> git notes add some-commit;	# hmm, noticed something
 home> ... hack hack hack ...

 Time to go to work...

 work> ... hack hack hack ...
 work> git notes add another-commit
 work> ... hack hack hack ...
 work> git fetch home;			# grabbing notes from home.
 work> git notes merge home/commits
 work> git push;			# publish.

Still, as long as the default can be overridden (even if only on a
per-remote basis), I wouldn't mind.  Maybe this way of using notes
would be unusual and the no-separate-remotes layout supports some
other use case better.