Re: [PATCH RESEND] branch: allow deleting dangling branches with --force

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 25, 2021, 21:37 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr1ehgq8t.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <7894f736-4681-7656-e2d4-5945d2c71d31@web.de>

René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de> writes:

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> git branch only allows deleting branches that point to valid commits.
> Skip that check if --force is given, as the caller is indicating with
> it that they know what they are doing and accept the consequences.
> This allows deleting dangling branches, which previously had to be
> reset to a valid start-point using --force first.
>
> Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
> ---
> Original submission:
> http://public-inbox.org/git/52847a99-db7c-9634-b3b1-fd9b1342bc32@web.de/

Thanks.

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> +test_expect_success 'branch --delete --force removes dangling branch' '
> +	test_when_finished "rm -f .git/refs/heads/dangling" &&
> +	echo $ZERO_OID >.git/refs/heads/dangling &&
> +	git branch --delete --force dangling &&
> +	test_path_is_missing .git/refs/heads/dangling
> +'

This goes against the spirit of the series merged at c9780bb2 (Merge branch 'hn/prep-tests-for-reftable', 2021-07-13).

Can we creat the dangling ref and test the lack of "dangling" ref in the end in a less transparent way?

An escape hatch is to make this test depend on the REFFILES prerequisite, just like dc474899 (t4202: mark bogus head hash test with REFFILES, 2021-05-31) did, which may be more appropriate.

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>  test_expect_success 'use --edit-description' '
>  	write_script editor <<-\EOF &&
>  		echo "New contents" >"$1"
> --
> 2.32.0