git push --delete <url> <branch> fails if run outside a repository

Adam Dinwoodie· Jun 6, 2022, 08:05 UTC · lore

When using `git push`, rather than specifying a remote by name, one can also specify a remote by URL, and this includes when the only operations being performed are to delete refs on the remote. This doesn't require any information about any local repository, but it fails unless the command is run from within an existing local Git repo.

This seems like a bug to me: there's no reason this shouldn't work. Clearly low priority, though, as this is a rare use case, and there's a simple workaround: just `cd` into any existing Git repo, or create a temporary empty repo to run the command from.

Simple test case attached; I've verified the behaviour the test script demonstrates on Git v2.36.1 on Cygwin, and on Git v2.34.1 (strictly, v2.34.1-1~bpo11) on Debian 11.

Cheers,

Adam

Junio C Hamano· Jun 6, 2022, 17:29 UTC · re: Adam Dinwoodie · lore

Re: git push --delete <url> <branch> fails if run outside a repository

Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> When using `git push`, rather than specifying a remote by name, one can
> also specify a remote by URL, and this includes when the only operations
> being performed are to delete refs on the remote.  This doesn't require
> any information about any local repository, but it fails unless the
> command is run from within an existing local Git repo.
>
> This seems like a bug to me: there's no reason this shouldn't work.

Perhaps.

While I fully agree with you that there is no reason this shouldn't work, I am not sure if there is a good reason to make it work, either. Any other push needs to have objects on _our_ side and requiring you to be in a repository is a sure way to do so. I am not convinced that it is worth our engineering effort to add a special case for this, but patches that are cleanly done without making too much damage to the existing code in readability and maintainability are probably welcome.

Thanks.