Re: Should 'git replace' respect GIT_NAMESPACE?

> > I was hoping it would, so I could have different replacements in
> > different namespaces, but it doesn't look like it does as of ~now:
>
> It might be interesting to know what you wanted to do with different
> replacements in different namespaces.
>
> When replace refs were introduced, there were discussions about
> extending replace refs to be able to have different sets of replace
> refs used at different times, so that it would be possible to have
> different "views" of a repository. For example there could be the
> following views:
>
>   - the "default" or "canonical" view where no replace refs are used,
>   - the "timestamp fixed" view where some replace refs to fix
> timestamp issues are used,
>   - the "authorship fixed" view where some replace refs to fix
> authorship and committership issues are used,
>   - the "build fixed" view where some replace refs are used so that
> the build work on all commits (which should help with bisecting),
>   - the "old history" view where some old history of the code (that
> was not imported when Git started to be used) is linked by some
> replace refs,
> etc.

> > $ git version
> > git version 2.47.1
> >
> > $ GIT_NAMESPACE=foo git replace
> > 751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819
> > a9dfd084086ee4d6bf00a33b0976f28c0997457e
> >
> > $ git rev-parse refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819
> > a9dfd084086ee4d6bf00a33b0976f28c0997457e
> >
> > $ git rev-parse
> > refs/namespaces/foo/refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819
> > refs/namespaces/foo/refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819
> > fatal: ambiguous argument
> > 'refs/namespaces/foo/refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819':
> > unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
> >
> > $ git log -n 1 --oneline 751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819
> > 751eeb3 (replaced) add go.mod
> >
> > $ GIT_NAMESPACE=foo git log -n 1 --oneline
> > 751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819
> > 751eeb3 (replaced) add go.mod
> >
> > Is this a bug in which case I might hope for a fix, or is it working
> > as intended?
>
> I don't think anyone mentioned using both namespaces and replace refs
> together before, so it's hard to say.
>
> I think namespaces are considered a server side thing to avoid
> duplicating objects in the common case where different users have
> different forks of the same original repo. And namespaces might not
> even be used much on the server side as there is the "alternates"
> mechanism that can be used for the same purpose. Also on the server
> side, you generally want to disable ref replacement entirely as it's
> just simpler, and most often what users want, to use the default view
> without any replacement. So it might just happen very rarely that
> people want to use both namespaces and replace refs together.