Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] t/t3308-notes-merge.sh: succeed with relaxed notes refs

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 20:19:58 -0500

On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 02:20:33AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> The fact that "git notes merge refs/heads/master" fails is a very
> good prevention of end-user mistakes, and this removal of test
> demonstrates that we are dropping a valuable safety.

Is it really that valuable? If it were:

  git notes merge master

I could see somebody running that accidentally. But we are talking about
somebody who is already fully-qualifying a ref (and anything unqualified
continues to get looked up under refs/notes). Do people really go to the
length of qualifying the ref and then get confused or upset that git did
exactly what they asked it to do?

I'm worried that the end-user safety here is really a strawman, and we
are making this more complicated than it needs to be.

-Peff