Re: [PATCH 3/3] rev-list: add --allow-missing-tips to be used with --missing=...

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 1, 2024, 21:27 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqil37yix1.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20240201115809.1177064-4-christian.couder@gmail.com>

Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> When such a command is used to find the dependencies of some objects,
> for example the dependencies of quarantined objects, it would be
> better if the command would instead consider such missing objects,
> especially commits, in the same way as other missing objects.
>
> If, for example `--missing=print` is used, it would be nice for some
> use cases if the missing tips passed as arguments were reported in
> the same way as other missing objects instead of the command just
> failing.
>
> Let's introduce a new `--allow-missing-tips` option to make it work
> like this.

An obvious question is if this even needs to be a new option. What are expected use cases where --missing=print without this option is beneficial? If there is no plausible use case, perhaps we can treat it as a mere bugfix to the existing --missing mechanism, especially given that support of commits in "--missing" itself is relatively a new thing.

If we can do this as a bugfix that is always on when --missing is used, then we do not have to worry about adding another tasteless loop outside the main command line parser, which is a huge upside ;-).