remote tracking branch deletion problem

Thomas Jarosch· Dec 19, 2008, 11:57 UTC · lore

Hello together,

while playing around with git, I stumbled upon a strange remote tracking branch deletion problem. It seems I'm unable to delete the remote tracking branch "origin/HEAD" using git 1.6.0.5. Here's what I did:

[tomj@storm repo]$ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/repo/.git/

[tomj@storm repo]$ echo "test" >test [tomj@storm repo]$ git add test [tomj@storm repo]$ git commit -m "Test"

[tomj@storm tmp]$ git clone repo alice Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/alice/.git/

[tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD
  origin/master

[tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r -d origin/HEAD Deleted remote branch origin/HEAD. [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r -d origin/master Deleted remote branch origin/master.

[tomj@storm alice]$ ls -al .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD -rw-rw---- 1 tomj intra2net 32 19. Dec 12:43 .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r error: refs/remotes/origin/HEAD points nowhere!

Is this supposed to be? git 1.6.1.rc3.35.gc0ceb shows a similar behavior.

Cheers, Thomas

Michael J Gruber· Dec 19, 2008, 14:56 UTC · re: Thomas Jarosch · lore

Re: remote tracking branch deletion problem

Thomas Jarosch venit, vidit, dixit 19.12.2008 12:57:

Show 31 quoted lines

> Hello together,
> 
> while playing around with git, I stumbled upon a strange remote tracking 
> branch deletion problem. It seems I'm unable to delete the remote tracking 
> branch "origin/HEAD" using git 1.6.0.5. Here's what I did:
> 
> [tomj@storm repo]$ git init
> Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/repo/.git/
> 
> [tomj@storm repo]$ echo "test" >test
> [tomj@storm repo]$ git add test
> [tomj@storm repo]$ git commit -m "Test"
> 
> [tomj@storm tmp]$ git clone repo alice
> Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/alice/.git/
> 
> [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r
>   origin/HEAD
>   origin/master
> 
> [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r -d origin/HEAD
> Deleted remote branch origin/HEAD.
> [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r -d origin/master
> Deleted remote branch origin/master.
> 
> [tomj@storm alice]$ ls -al .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
> -rw-rw---- 1 tomj intra2net 32 19. Dec 12:43 .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
> [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r
> error: refs/remotes/origin/HEAD points nowhere!
> 
> Is this supposed to be? git 1.6.1.rc3.35.gc0ceb shows a similar behavior.

I think the point here is that HEAD is really a symref. "git remote rm origin" makes sure that symrefs are removed, and is the right command to use here.

"git branch -r -d", as well as "git update-ref -d" fail to remove HEAD because it's really not a branch but a symref.

You can use "git update-ref -d --no-deref" to remove HEAD.

Making builtin-branch use delete_ref(,,REF_ISSYMREF) leads to success for your above commands. I don't know about side effects, though all tests pass. Is this sensible?

I guess I should come up with a test for this along with the patch.

Michael