This might be an odd request: allow git push to delete one level refs like "ref/foo". Some users on my side often push "refs/for/master" to the remote for code review, but due to a user's typo, "refs/master" is pushed to the remote. Pushing a one level ref like "refs/foo" should not have been successful, but since my server side directly updated the ref during the proc-receive-hook phase of git receive-pack, "refs/foo" was mistakenly left at on the server. But for some reasons, users cannot delete this special branch through "git push -d". First, I executed git update-ref --stdin inside my proc-receive-hook to delete the branch. As a result, update-ref reported an error: "cannot lock ref 'refs/foo': reference already exists". So I tried GIT_TRACKET_PACKET to debug and found that git push did not seem to pass the correct ref old-oid, which is why update-ref reported an error. "18:13:41.214872 pkt-line.c:80 packet: receive-pack< 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 refs/foo\0 report-status-v2 side-band-64k object-format=sha1 agent=git/2.39.0.227.g262c45b6a1" Tracing it back, the check_ref() in the git push link didn't record the old-oid for the remote "refs/foo". At the same time, the server update() process will reject the one level ref by default and return a "funny refname" error. It is worth mentioning that since I deleted the branch, the error message returned here is "refusing to create funny ref 'refs/foo' remotely", which is also worth fixing. So this patch series do: v1. 1. fix funny refname error message from "create" to "update". 2. let server allow delete one level ref. 3. let client pass correct one level ref old-oid. ZheNing Hu (2): receive-pack: fix funny ref error messsage [RFC] push: allow delete one level ref builtin/receive-pack.c | 7 +++++-- connect.c | 2 +- t/t5516-fetch-push.sh | 18 ++++++++++++++++++ 3 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) base-commit: a38d39a4c50d1275833aba54c4dbdfce9e2e9ca1 Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-1465%2Fadlternative%2Fzh%2Fdelete-one-level-ref-v1 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-1465/adlternative/zh/delete-one-level-ref-v1 Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/1465 -- gitgitgadget
