Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/8] refs: add symref support to 'git-update-ref'

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2024 11:01:53 -0700

Karthik Nayak <[email-masked]> writes:

> 2. We change the syntax to something like
>
>     symref-update SP <ref> SP <new-ref> [SP (ref <old-target> | oid
> <old-oid>)] LF
>
> this would remove any ambiguity since the user specifies the data type
> they're providing.

Yup.  Being explicit helps, especially if you are only dealing with
programs that do not complain "that's too many keystrokes" like
pesky humans ;-).

When the topic's overall title is to add support for symbolic refs
to the update-ref command, a natural expectation is that in a far
enough future everything that can be done with "git symbolic-ref"
can be done with "git update-ref" and we can, if we wanted to,
depreate "git symbolic-ref".  Is that really what is going on here?

IOW, we should add support for operation modes other than "--stdin"
as well, shouldn't we?

Thanks.