Re: error: src refspec refs/heads/master matches more than one.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 14, 2014, 19:10 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqha81ik79.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <87d2ip3ac9.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org>

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> ...
>>  A. Because it will confuse you.
>>  B. I know what I am doing.
>>  A. ???
>
> A. But maybe Git will no longer know what you are doing.  Its standard
> way of resolving references will mean that once a branch
> refs/heads/wibble exists, referring to a branch wibble will become extra
> hard.  For example, stuff like
>
> push origin HEAD:refs/heads/wibble
>
> will maybe create or update a new branch wibble, or maybe it will just
> push to the existing branch refs/heads/wibble.

I suspect that is a bad example (do refs on _our_ side influence how RHS of the colon that names refs on the other side is interpreted), but I think I know what you are trying to say. But Git never knows what you are doing---it just does what you tell it to, so it comes back to "It will confuse you to the point that you would not be able to guess what Git will do matches your expectation". Whenever I tell them that, a counterpoint B. makes is still "I know what I am doing.", which is stubborn, rather obvious, and unfortunate.

How much of the namespace are we willing to carve out if we were to go this route anyway? Things we use, i.e. refs/heads and refs/tags, would be no-brainers, but do we also forbid refs/review, which we ourselves do not use but some people may have in their repositories? Anything that begins with refs/? Anything that begins with refs/ and has more than two slashes in it?