From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Junio C Hamano Subject: Re: Deleting remote branch pointed by remote HEAD Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:42:27 -0800 Message-ID: <7veiywe6h8.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> References: <49773240.7090605@drmicha.warpmail.net> <49773E48.90302@drmicha.warpmail.net> <20090121161940.GA20702@coredump.intra.peff.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Jeff King , Michael J Gruber , =?utf-8?Q?Marc-Andr=C3=A9?= Lureau , git@vger.kernel.org To: Daniel Barkalow X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Wed Jan 21 21:44:12 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1LPjve-0004YR-SY for gcvg-git-2@gmane.org; Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:44:03 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752318AbZAUUmk (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:42:40 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752099AbZAUUmi (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:42:38 -0500 Received: from a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com ([207.106.133.19]:47897 "EHLO sasl.smtp.pobox.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751975AbZAUUmi (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:42:38 -0500 Received: from localhost.localdomain (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EE6492989; Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:42:36 -0500 (EST) Received: from pobox.com (unknown [68.225.240.211]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id A041A92986; Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:42:29 -0500 (EST) User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) X-Pobox-Relay-ID: 095146D2-E7FC-11DD-95C5-5720C92D7133-77302942!a-sasl-fastnet.pobox.com Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Daniel Barkalow writes: > That is, refs/remotes/origin/HEAD is only there to let the user abbreviate > the most useful branch of the remote; there's no reason it should reflect > the remote's HEAD, except that the remote's HEAD is a good guess if the > user hasn't said anything. > > I think it might be more appropriate to just care less about a broken > symref, explain what's wrong if the user actually tries to use it, and > otherwise mostly ignore it. I agree with you in many of the points in your message. The user used to be able to say "origin" as a shorthand for "origin/frotz" by having "remotes/origin/HEAD" locally, and somebody (not necessarily the user himself) broke this arrangement. Silently discarding HEAD will lose the information on which remote branch was the interesting one for the user. It may also change the disambiguation rules for "origin" without telling the user. Neither is desirable. The tool needs a better explanation of the situation. We also want an easier way to help the user repoint the HEAD to something else, or remove the dangling HEAD than telling him to use symbolic-ref.