Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] rev-list: add --allow-missing-tips to be used with --missing=...

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2024 13:27:22 -0800

Christian Couder <[email-masked]> writes:

> When such a command is used to find the dependencies of some objects,
> for example the dependencies of quarantined objects, it would be
> better if the command would instead consider such missing objects,
> especially commits, in the same way as other missing objects.
>
> If, for example `--missing=print` is used, it would be nice for some
> use cases if the missing tips passed as arguments were reported in
> the same way as other missing objects instead of the command just
> failing.
>
> Let's introduce a new `--allow-missing-tips` option to make it work
> like this.

An obvious question is if this even needs to be a new option.  What
are expected use cases where --missing=print without this option is
beneficial?  If there is no plausible use case, perhaps we can treat
it as a mere bugfix to the existing --missing mechanism, especially
given that support of commits in "--missing" itself is relatively
a new thing.

If we can do this as a bugfix that is always on when --missing is
used, then we do not have to worry about adding another tasteless
loop outside the main command line parser, which is a huge upside
;-).