Re: [PATCH] archive: re-allow HEAD:Documentation on a remote invocation

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 06:46:56PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Carlos Martín Nieto <cmn@elego.de> writes:
> 
> > The tightening done in (ee27ca4a: archive: don't let remote clients
> > get unreachable commits, 2011-11-17) went too far and disallowed
> > HEAD:Documentation as it would try to find "HEAD:Documentation" as a
> > ref.
> 
> I do not think it went too far. Actually we discussed this exact issue
> when the topic was cooking, and saw no objections. The commit in question
> itself advertises this restriction.

I think you and I discussed it off list (I originally took this off-list
because the original issue did have some security implications). So I
don't think people necessarily had a chance to object.

> Why are we loosening it now? I do not see a compelling reason to do so.

I see it the opposite way. People are clearly using the "$ref:$path"
syntax. So why would we restrict them from doing so? There are no
security implications (i.e., they could always just grab $ref and
extract $path themselves). In my view, ee27ca4a was over-eager in its
restrictions because I wanted it to be simple and close the hole. Now we
can take our time adding more code to loosen it.

-Peff