Re: Overwriting bare repositories' master

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Sylvain Beucler <beuc@gnu.org> writes:

> I tried and I found something that doesn't seem to follow the
> documentation:
>
> repo_one$ git push Beuc@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/srv/git/sources/administration.git \
>   master:refs/heads/master
> # [OK]
> repo_two$ git push --force Beuc@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/srv/git/administration.git \
>   +refs/heads/master:refs/heads/master
> updating 'refs/heads/master'
>   from ee3bda653dfabaf0f78f2a9977abec180f2b19dc
>   to   c9a726b610bafc82142a16af80b83d28375ca619
> Generating pack...
> Done counting 0 objects.
> Total 0, written 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
> Unpacking 0 objects
> error: denying non-fast forward; you should pull first
>
> From man git-push:
> "If the optional plus + is used, the remote ref is updated even if it
> does not result in a fast forward update."
>
> This also makes one wonder how the 'pu' git branch is updated.
>
> One the one hand, this means that sysadmin intervention is required to
> reset such a repository, which is bad. One the other hand, this is
> also a security because users cannot erase history, even if there a
> cron job to prune&pack the git repositories, which is good.
>
> Is this by design? Or should it work?

I suspect (because I cannot see your .git/config in the
repository; which would say "[core] sharedrepository = 1" if my
suspicion is correct) that this is fairly new heavyhanded safety
valve added by the list around mid September, with this:

    commit 11031d7e9f34f6a20ff4a4bd4fa3e5e3c0024a57
    Author: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
    Date:   Thu Sep 21 01:07:54 2006 +0200

        add receive.denyNonFastforwards config variable

        If receive.denyNonFastforwards is set to true,
        git-receive-pack will deny non fast-forwards, i.e. forced
        updates. Most notably, a push to a repository which has that
        flag set will fail.

        As a first user, 'git-init-db --shared' sets this flag,
        since in a shared setup, you are most unlikely to want
        forced pushes to succeed.

The reasoning is exactly as you guessed.

I think the intention of the patch is that the repository
administrators are expected to either (1) adjust the
non-fast-forwarding branch to fast-forward (by reset --hard to
an ancestor of what you are trying to push into), (2)
temporarily disable the safety value by editing .git/config, or
(3) instead of pushing into it, force fetching into it from the
repository machine.

It is doing what it was designed to do.  It is a different issue
if the design is good, but rewinding the public branch is not
something even a repository administrator should take lightly
and not expected to happen often (except in cases like yours
where the administrator is tipping his toe into the water), so I
think overall the current behaviour is an acceptable balance
between safety and convenience.

My public repository is not shared (only I can push into it) so
this is a non-issue for my 'pu' branch.