Re: ref-format checking regression

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Apr 28, 2012, 09:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20120428092450.GA2850@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqr4v99pu5.fsf@junio.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 08:06:26AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > I upgraded git on a machine recently, and it created problems for a repo
> > with a bogus character in a ref name.  Older versions of git never
> > complained about it. Newer ones, containing your dce4bab ("add_ref():
> > verify that the refname is formatted correctly") do. That's fine; it's
> > bogus and git _should_ complain about it.
> > 
> > However, recovering from the situation is unnecessarily hard, ...
> > ...
> > I seem to recall discussing this format-tightening and trying to be sure
> > that users were left with a way forward for fixing their repos. But I
> > can't find the discussion, and I don't recall any conclusion we came to.
> 
> I haven't dug the archive but I do recall pointing many issues out
> around the theme "be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you
> produce" on this topic, and loosening one or two showstoppers during the
> review cycle, but obviously we did not catch all of them.

I should point out that this was due to GitHub recently upgrading the version of git on our backend servers. And out of the bazillion repos we host, I have so far seen only one actual bug report. So while it might be nice to be more friendly, it may simply not be all that common an issue (and in this case, we were able to resolve it manually). If it's easy to fix, I think we should, but if the fix ends up being very complex, it might not be worth the trouble.

-Peff