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Wed, 5 Aug 2026 12:30:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Junio C Hamano To: Xavier Morel Cc: git@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: `git push --porcelain` has no effect when deleting a ref which does not exist In-Reply-To: <27d95520-409e-4d1b-b8b1-37a910bff604@odoo.com> (Xavier Morel's message of "Wed, 5 Aug 2026 09:19:13 +0200") References: <27d95520-409e-4d1b-b8b1-37a910bff604@odoo.com> Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:30:14 -0700 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Xavier Morel writes: > Using `push --delete --porcelain` with refs which are extant correctly > outputs the relevant information in the documented format: > > - :refs/heads/ [deleted] > - :refs/heads/ [deleted] > > However doing the same with refs which don't exist on the remote (e.g. > because of a concurrent deletion) has the error written out in > human-targeted text: > > error: unable to delete '': remote ref does not exist > error: unable to delete '': remote ref does not exist > > I would have expected something along the lines of: > > ! :refs/heads/ [remote failure] > > which would be machine-readable as documented for the `--porcelain` > flag. Was that intended or is it just something that fell through the > cracks of code convolution? If I have to guess, I would say it is because nobody thought of covering this usage pattern, which allows you to randomly throw a deletion request to probe what does and what does not exist on the other side. Patches welcome. Thanks.