Re: [PATCH] fsck: return non-zero status on missing ref tips

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 12, 2014, 04:58 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPc5daXMMpqtH=DwLLXgHXVfHThN5MfHwn6dPK6OaZvAQGXT_Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20140912042939.GA5968@peff.net>

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 9:29 PM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> [+cc mhagger for packed-refs wisdom]
>
> If we only have a packed copy of "refs/heads/master" and it is broken,
> then deleting any _other_ unrelated ref will cause refs/heads/master to
> be dropped from the packed-refs file entirely. We get an error message,
> but that's easy to miss, and the pointer to master's sha1 is lost
> forever.

Hmph, and the significance of losing a random 20-byte object name that is useless in your repository is? You could of course ask around other repositories (i.e. your origin, others that fork from the same origin, etc.), and having the name might make it easier to locate the exact object.

But in such a case, either they have it at the tip (in which case you can just fetch the branch you lost), or they have it reachable from one of their tips of branches you had shown interest in (that is why you had that lost object in the first place). Either way, you would be running "git fetch" or asking them to send "git bundle" output to be unbundled at your end, and the way you ask would be by refname, not the object name, so I am not sure if the loss is that grave.

Perhaps I am missing something, of course, though.