On Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 06:53:21AM +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote: > TL;DR: "git push --mirror" does not in fact push all refs, despite > documentation stating it does. It ONLY pushes refs in refs/heads/ and > refs/tags/. Perhaps there's a bug, but it is meant to and does push all refs in a simple case: git init git commit --allow-empty -m foo git update-ref refs/heads/other-branch HEAD git update-ref refs/foo/bar HEAD git init --bare dst.git git push --mirror dst.git produces: To dst.git * [new reference] refs/foo/bar -> refs/foo/bar * [new branch] main -> main * [new branch] other-branch -> other-branch > I was surprised to find, on the new server presently configured as > replica, but intended to take over as the primary, that the > refs/push-certs was missing on every single repo. Ah. You are not likely to have success pushing a single-level ref like that, as receive-pack rejects it: $ git update-ref refs/push-certs HEAD $ git push dst.git refs/push-certs Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 remote: error: refusing to create funny ref 'refs/push-certs' remotely To dst.git ! [remote rejected] refs/push-certs -> refs/push-certs (funny refname) error: failed to push some refs to 'dst.git' There I used an explicit refspec naming it. But if I used "refs/*" (which is what --mirror is doing under the hood), then it doesn't even try sending it, as the client filters it out from the wildcard (otherwise, everyone would get server-side errors from refs/stash). So you probably want to choose a different refname to store your data. I do think the status of these single-level refs is not well documented. The rules in git-check-ref-format(1) imply that they are not valid: They must contain at least one /. This enforces the presence of a category like heads/, tags/ etc. but the actual names are not restricted. but that rule is not enforced internally, as "refs/" is sufficient for the internal check_refname_format() to allow it. But receive-pack has, since 1a7141ff28 (Ignore funny refname sent from remote, 2005-10-13), implemented the format check after stripping refs/. And then the client side followed that lead in 30affa1e9a (send-pack: do not send out single-level refs such as refs/stash, 2008-10-29). -Peff
