Re: [PATCH v2 3/6] transport-helper: clarify pushing without refspecs

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 5:11 AM, John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 11:14:30PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> This has never worked, since it's inception the code simply skips all
>> the refs, essentially telling fast-export to do nothing.
>>
>> Let's at least tell the user what's going on.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
>> ---
>>  Documentation/gitremote-helpers.txt | 4 ++--
>>  t/t5801-remote-helpers.sh           | 6 +++---
>>  transport-helper.c                  | 5 +++--
>>  3 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/gitremote-helpers.txt b/Documentation/gitremote-helpers.txt
>> index ba7240c..4d26e37 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/gitremote-helpers.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/gitremote-helpers.txt
>> @@ -162,8 +162,8 @@ Miscellaneous capabilities
>>       For remote helpers that implement 'import' or 'export', this capability
>>       allows the refs to be constrained to a private namespace, instead of
>>       writing to refs/heads or refs/remotes directly.
>> -     It is recommended that all importers providing the 'import' or 'export'
>> -     capabilities use this.
>> +     It is recommended that all importers providing the 'import'
>> +     capability use this. It's mandatory for 'export'.
>
> s/It's/It is/

What's the difference?

>> --- a/transport-helper.c
>> +++ b/transport-helper.c
>> @@ -785,6 +785,9 @@ static int push_refs_with_export(struct transport *transport,
>>       struct string_list revlist_args = STRING_LIST_INIT_NODUP;
>>       struct strbuf buf = STRBUF_INIT;
>>
>> +     if (!data->refspecs)
>> +             die("remote-helper doesn't support push; refspec needed");
>
> I think the "refspec needed" text is likely to be confusing if an
> end-user ever sees this message.  I'm not sure how we can provide useful
> feedback for both remote helper authors and end-users though.

It doesn't have to be. They'll google it, or they'll post a bug report
with this warning verbatim, or they'll just ignore it. I don't think
there's much more we can do to help in either of these cases.

-- 
Felipe Contreras