Ronnie Sahlberg wrote: > Wrap all the ref updates inside a transaction to make the update atomic. Interesting. [...] > --- a/builtin/receive-pack.c > +++ b/builtin/receive-pack.c > @@ -46,6 +46,8 @@ static void *head_name_to_free; > static int sent_capabilities; > static int shallow_update; > static const char *alt_shallow_file; > +static struct strbuf err = STRBUF_INIT; I think it would be cleaner for err to be local. It isn't used for communication between functions. [...] > @@ -580,15 +581,9 @@ static const char *update(struct command *cmd, struct shallow_info *si) > update_shallow_ref(cmd, si)) > return "shallow error"; > > - lock = lock_any_ref_for_update(namespaced_name, old_sha1, > - 0, NULL); > - if (!lock) { > - rp_error("failed to lock %s", name); > - return "failed to lock"; > - } > - if (write_ref_sha1(lock, new_sha1, "push")) { > - return "failed to write"; /* error() already called */ > - } > + if (ref_transaction_update(transaction, namespaced_name, > + new_sha1, old_sha1, 0, 1, &err)) > + return "failed to update"; The original used rp_error to send an error message immediately via sideband. This drops that --- intended? The old error string shown on the push status line was was "failed to lock" or "failed to write" which makes it clear that the cause is contention or database problems or filesystem problems, respectively. After this change it would say "failed to update" which is about as clear as "failed". Would it be safe to send err.buf as-is over the wire, or does it contain information or formatting that wouldn't be suitable for the client? (I haven't thought this through completely yet.) Is there some easy way to distinguish between failure to lock and failure to write? Or is there some one-size-fits-all error for this case? When the transaction fails, we need to make sure that all ref updates emit 'ng' and not 'ok' in receive-pack.c::report (see the example at the end of Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt for what this means). What error string should they use? Is there some way to make it clear to the user which ref was the culprit? What should happen when checks outside the ref transaction system cause a ref update to fail? I'm thinking of * per-ref 'update' hook (see githooks(5)) * fast-forward check * ref creation/deletion checks * attempt to push to the currently checked out branch I think the natural thing to do would be to put each ref update in its own transaction to start so the semantics do not change right away. If there are obvious answers to all these questions, then a separate patch could combine all these into a single transaction; or if there are no obvious answers, we could make the single-transaction-per-push semantics optional (using a configuration variable or protocol capability or something) to make it possible to experiment. Hope that helps, Jonathan -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html