Re: [PATCH] transport-helper: do not request symbolic refs to remote helpers

> Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:
> 
> > The patch changes the behavior in all cases, because it didn't feel
> > necessary to have a different behavior between the "normal" case and the
> > '?' case: it makes sense to request the ref being pointed at than the
> > symbolic ref in every case.
> >
> > Moreover, this makes existing non-git remote-helpers work without
> > having to modify them to provide a refspec for HEAD (none of the 5
> > mercurial remote-helpers I checked do).
> 
> I do not question the latter.  It is not surprising if all of them
> share the same limitation that shares the same root in the same
> impedance mismatch.
> 
> The trouble I had in supporting "makes sense ... in every case" was
> that you said that the code as patched would not work for a symref
> pointing at another symref.  The original code did not have that
> problem with remote helpers that support the 'list' command.
> 
> Does the new code avoid regressions for them and if so how?  That is
> what was needed in the justification.
> 
> For remote helpers that support the 'list' command, asking for a
> symref and asking for a ref that the symref points at both work OK
> and behave the same, and hopefully that would be true even when the
> latter is a symref that points yet another ref, so dereferencing
> only one level on our end when making a request, instead of letting
> the remote side dereference, is not likely to cause regression.