Re: [PATCH] transport-helper: do not request symbolic refs to remote helpers

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:41:51PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:
> 
> > Note the most important part is actually between the parens: that only
> > happens when the remote helper returns '?' to the `list` command, which
> > non-git remotes helpers (like git-remote-hg or git-remote-bzr) do.
> > git-remote-testgit also does, so if you only apply the test parts of the
> > patch, you'll see that the test fails.
> >
> > remote-curl probably doesn't hit the problem because it's not returning
> > '?' to `list`.
> 
> Hmm, that suggests that the new codepath should be taken only when
> the remote helper says '?' (does it mean "I dunno"? where are these
> documented, by the way?)

in Documentation/gitremote-helpers.txt

> , yes?  It wasn't immediately obvious from
> the patch text that it was the case.

The patch changes the behavior in all cases, because it didn't feel
necessary to have a different behavior between the "normal" case and the
'?' case: it makes sense to request the ref being pointed at than the
symbolic ref in every case. Moreover, this makes existing non-git
remote-helpers work without having to modify them to provide a refspec
for HEAD (none of the 5 mercurial remote-helpers I checked do). The
paragraph before last in the commit message mentioned this in maybe not
very clear terms.

Mike