From: Jeff King Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:38:05 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] logging branch deletion to help recovering from mistakes Message-ID: <20101207193804.GA27685@sigill.intra.peff.net> In-Reply-To: <7v7hflqth1.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 11:21:46AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > I am more worried about stuff in branch..* that are discarded upon > "branch -d". Without the config items, you won't have a working: > > $ branch -d frotz > $ branch --undelete frotz > $ git checkout frotz > $ git pull Hmm, yeah, I didn't think about that. Two possible solutions: 1. Just leave it in .git/config. It is not hurting anything if the branch does not exist, but it is cruft in a file the user might look at. 2. Drop it into .git/config.dead/. When resurrecting a branch, copy it back into .git/config. In both cases, when the reflog for the deleted branch is pruned to nothing, we delete the relevant config, too. In the second case, I think you would have to take special care for something like: $ git branch frotz origin/master $ git branch -d frotz $ git remote rename origin foo $ git branch --undelete frotz In the non-deleted case, this transparently renames branch.frotz.remote from "origin" to "foo". In the deleted case, we would need to make sure the dead config is updated, too. To be honest, I have never been that interested in a "branch --undelete" feature. I much more care about leaving the reflogs of deleted branches around, so I can "git checkout -b foo bar@{1}" later on[1]. That is, to me branch undeletion is not about bringing a branch back wholesale, but rather remembering commits so I can start a new branch there. But I guess others might disagree. -Peff [1] Well, that and just piece of mind from knowing that "branch -d" is not totally unrecoverable. Specifically, if we kept deleted reflogs around, it would be safe(r) to turn on auto-prune on fetch, the lack of which is something that seems to confuse new users.