Re: [PATCH] fsck: return non-zero status on missing ref tips

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 9:29 PM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> [+cc mhagger for packed-refs wisdom]
>
> If we only have a packed copy of "refs/heads/master" and it is broken,
> then deleting any _other_ unrelated ref will cause refs/heads/master to
> be dropped from the packed-refs file entirely. We get an error message,
> but that's easy to miss, and the pointer to master's sha1 is lost
> forever.

Hmph, and the significance of losing a random 20-byte object name that
is useless in your repository is? You could of course ask around other
repositories (i.e. your origin, others that fork from the same origin,
etc.), and having the name might make it easier to locate the exact
object.

But in such a case, either they have it at the tip (in which case you
can just fetch the branch you lost), or they have it reachable from
one of their tips of branches you had shown interest in (that is why
you had that lost object in the first place). Either way, you would be
running "git fetch" or asking them to send "git bundle" output to be
unbundled at your end, and the way you ask would be by refname, not
the object name, so I am not sure if the loss is that grave.

Perhaps I am missing something, of course, though.