From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:15:26 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/6] remote prune: warn dangling symrefs
Message-ID: <20090209191526.GC27037@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1234170565-6740-5-git-send-email-gitster@pobox.com>

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 01:09:23AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> If you prune from the remote "frotz" that deleted the ref your tracking
> branch remotes/frotz/HEAD points at, the symbolic ref will become
> dangling.  We used to detect this as an error condition and issued a
> message every time refs are enumerated.
> 
> This stops the error message, but moves the warning to "remote prune".

Very nice. As a bonus, this fixes certain (admittedly unlikely) renames,
too (which don't need to pass the BROKEN flag, since ref_rename uses
get_loose_refs directly):

  # without this patch
  $ git symbolic-ref refs/heads/foo/bar refs/heads/nonexistant
  $ git branch -m master foo
  error: refs/heads/foo/bar points nowhere!
  error: there are still refs under 'refs/heads/foo'
  error: unable to lock refs/heads/foo for update
  fatal: Branch rename failed

  # with this patch
  $ git branch -m master foo
  error: 'refs/heads/foo/bar' exists; cannot create 'refs/heads/foo'
  fatal: Branch rename failed

-Peff