Subject: Re: Testing for existence of a remote branch from a script

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2025 10:44:45 -0800

"Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]> writes:

> So if enhancing the git server's functionality (either via git
> ls-remotes or some other operation) is on the table, ...

Enhancements that do not require breaking backward compatibility is
always on the table ;-).

> one of the things
> that I would really love is some way of asking the question is "git
> commit <SHA hash>" in the remote repository reachable via some branch
> or git tag?", and optionally, "which git branch/tag should be fetched
> if the testing infrastructure wants to be able to test that specific
> git commit ID?"

Both sounds like a useful thing to do, but I wonder how generic
these should be and at the same time how common a narrowed-down
feature would suffice.  If we try to make it generally very useful,
at some point, we'd cross the line where we'd be better off doing
"run ssh and execute these Git commands" over the wire X-<.

There are server-side-minded folks who are extending "cat-file --batch"
to allow you to ask about objects you do not have but the other end
has, if I am not mistaken,  by the "remote-object-info" feature?

I wonder if these more advanced "info" about objects you mentioned
fit into the picture well as part of it.

Thanks.