Subject: Re: [PATCH] Documentation: "on for all" configuration of notes.rewriteRef

From: Thomas Rast <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 23:29:17 +0200

Jeff King wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 10:27:04PM +0200, Thomas Rast wrote:
> 
> > Users had problems finding a working setting for notes.rewriteRef.
> > Document how to enable rewriting for all notes.
> 
> Hmm. Is this a safe thing to recommend?
> 
> I think the idea of storing something like generation numbers in
> git-notes is dead at this point, but it would be quite disastrous to
> have generation numbers copied to rebased commits. Ditto for something
> like a patch-id cache. Should these sorts of immutable cache notes, if
> and when they do come about, go into a separate hierarchy?

Admittedly I never considered the problem of supposedly-immutable
notes here.  The whole point was to help users who had no idea that
the string put there should probably start with refs/notes/.

So maybe the patch should instead say something along the lines of, to
enable rewriting for the notes ref called foo, put refs/notes/foo --
which to a core gitter of course sounds extremely redundant.

But what about the general issue of users who *have* put refs/notes/*,
and then some software comes along that does not expect them to be
rewritten?  Do we declare the software broken, or discourage from such
blanket rewriting?

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch