From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Can I fetch an arbitrary commit by sha1?
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 10:35:51 -0700
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Cc: Dan Johnson <computerdruid@gmail.com>,
	Christian Halstrick <christian.halstrick@gmail.com>,
	Git <git@vger.kernel.org>
To: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
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Jeff King wrote:

> But I think Christian is arguing that the client side should complain
> that $sha1 is not a remote ref, and therefore not something we can
> fetch.  This used to be the behavior until 6e7b66e (fetch: fetch objects
> by their exact SHA-1 object names, 2013-01-29). The idea there is that
> some refs may be kept "hidden" from the ref advertisement, but clients
> who learn about the sha1 out-of-band may fetch the tips of hidden refs.
>
> I'm not sure it is a feature that has been particularly well-used to
> date, though.

I use it pretty often.  The commits I'm fetching are pointed to
directly by refs, but I don't care about what the ref is called and I
want exactly that commit.

The context is that the commit is mentioned in the gerrit web UI.
Fetching by commit name feels simpler than getting the
refs/changes/something ref, since I think in terms of commits instead
of in terms of change numbers.

Thanks and hope that helps,
Jonathan