Re: [PATCH] Remove restriction on notes ref base

Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org> writes:

Why not? Within a repository with bad commits, you would want an option to have them applied to bad commits you still have, no?

I am still torn with this patch, and I say "still" for a reason. Even though notes are implemented as commits, they are not commits on a part of normal histories, and restriction of them within refs/notes hierarchy at least is a safety measure (it is easy to loosen a restriction later, but it is hard to let people loose first and then later restrict). While a purist in me says that GIT_NOTES_REF and command line option _should_ enforce the same restriction, keeping the more obscure GIT_NOTES_REF interface a bit looser gives us an escape hatch.

As to remote interface, refs/remotes/$remotes/ hierarchy corresponds to the local refs/heads/ interface, so I do not think we will change the default mapping we document (and have "clone" prepare) to place notes obtained from elsewhere in refs/remotes/ hierarchy (we do not do that for tags neither), so I think Johan's point is an independent issue.