Re: can I remove or move a tag in a remote repository?

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Nov 29, 2006, 11:45 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0611291220130.30004@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <87u00imsin.fsf@rho.meyering.net>

Hi,

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Jim Meyering wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > I also think that git-fetch silently updating tags is wrong. Rather, it
> > should warn that the tags are different. But I've been wrong before.
> 
> AFAIK, no one wants git-fetch to update tags _silently_. I expected it 
> give a diagnostic and fail by default -- and it already does that.

Umm. I just tested it, and it said "updating tag" without failing.

> Pushing moved tags is serious business.  I was hoping to be able to use 
> --force to override that fail-safe.

Hmmm. Probably Junio's patch is correct after all, since tags are special creatures: you do not expect them to change, but if, they can change arbitrarily (as opposed to branches, which should evolve linearly).

> My goal is to maintain a symbolic reference "cvs-head" that points
> to the newest git trunk node that's been mirrored to a CVS repository.

But is that not just tracking another branch?

Show 5 quoted lines

> Without even considering any other option, I chose to use a lightweight
> tag for that purpose, since I have a conceptual view that it's a label I
> can move from one referent to another.  It strikes me as counter-intuitive
> to use a temporary git "branch" that way.  Would that even work, removing
> it and recreating it all the time?

Yes, it would. Remember: a branch in git is just a named ref. It literally used to be a 41-byte file pointing to the tip of the branch in the ancestor graph. And you can update it with git-update-ref.

So, a branch in git is very much the movable label you are looking for.

Ciao, Dscho