> > I was hoping it would, so I could have different replacements in > > different namespaces, but it doesn't look like it does as of ~now: > > It might be interesting to know what you wanted to do with different > replacements in different namespaces. > > When replace refs were introduced, there were discussions about > extending replace refs to be able to have different sets of replace > refs used at different times, so that it would be possible to have > different "views" of a repository. For example there could be the > following views: > > - the "default" or "canonical" view where no replace refs are used, > - the "timestamp fixed" view where some replace refs to fix > timestamp issues are used, > - the "authorship fixed" view where some replace refs to fix > authorship and committership issues are used, > - the "build fixed" view where some replace refs are used so that > the build work on all commits (which should help with bisecting), > - the "old history" view where some old history of the code (that > was not imported when Git started to be used) is linked by some > replace refs, > etc. That is indeed roughly what I had in mind: a bunch of different views of the repo. > > $ git version > > git version 2.47.1 > > > > $ GIT_NAMESPACE=foo git replace > > 751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819 > > a9dfd084086ee4d6bf00a33b0976f28c0997457e > > > > $ git rev-parse refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819 > > a9dfd084086ee4d6bf00a33b0976f28c0997457e > > > > $ git rev-parse > > refs/namespaces/foo/refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819 > > refs/namespaces/foo/refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819 > > fatal: ambiguous argument > > 'refs/namespaces/foo/refs/replace/751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819': > > unknown revision or path not in the working tree. > > > > $ git log -n 1 --oneline 751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819 > > 751eeb3 (replaced) add go.mod > > > > $ GIT_NAMESPACE=foo git log -n 1 --oneline > > 751eeb3b4d23c7fbde919aedde8c091f04f4f819 > > 751eeb3 (replaced) add go.mod > > > > Is this a bug in which case I might hope for a fix, or is it working > > as intended? > > I don't think anyone mentioned using both namespaces and replace refs > together before, so it's hard to say. > > I think namespaces are considered a server side thing to avoid > duplicating objects in the common case where different users have > different forks of the same original repo. And namespaces might not > even be used much on the server side as there is the "alternates" > mechanism that can be used for the same purpose. Also on the server > side, you generally want to disable ref replacement entirely as it's > just simpler, and most often what users want, to use the default view > without any replacement. So it might just happen very rarely that > people want to use both namespaces and replace refs together. Got it. Thanks. Do you have suggestions for alternative mechanisms I might use? I want to be able to easily enable/disable a set of replace directives for the purposes of running other git commands, without globally altering the repository. Otherwise I have to worry about locking, cleanup when something goes wrong, and state visibility and management. All possible to fix, but messy compared with something like namespaces. -josh
