From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:51:33 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] Make old sha1 optional with git update-ref -d
Message-ID: <7vk5h73w2i.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080602233453.26087.52259.stgit@yoghurt>

Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com> writes:

> Giving the old sha1 is already optional when changing a ref, and it's
> quite handy when running update-ref manually. So make it optional for
> deleting a ref too.
>
> Signed-off-by: Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com>

"Handy" is not a very good reason when talking about plumbing command like
update-ref that takes an extra parameter for safety of the last step in
read, operate, verify-and-update sequence.

Although it is not a reason _bad enough_ to make your patch a bad idea,
perhaps you should rethink the problem at the same time?  Whatever you are
trying to do cannot be done without manually invoking update-ref directly
by the end user, perhaps that needs to be addressed?