Re: Unclear error message in "git remote update"

Samuel Tardieu [off-list ref] writes:

One of my colleague seems to have destroyed one of its head in his
private repository. When fetching from it through "git remote update"
using next, the repository name is not output:

% git remote update
error: refs/heads/2.0-uobjects points nowhere!

Using master, I get:

% git remote update
Updating core
Updating matthieu
error: refs/heads/2.0-uobjects points nowhere!
Updating origin

which is IMO much clearer. Also, I like seeing what remote repository
it is updating from in case anything gets stuck or slow.

Any objection to reinstating the message as does the following patch?

I do not have objections, but it feels that the message for normal case
(success) is cluttering the output.

If the remote repository is in a bad shape to solicit a "points nowhere"
error, perhaps

 (1) that error message should be squelched out completely, as it does not
     affect the outcome of the fetch anyway, or

 (2) the dangling symref should cause "fetch" to error out but with a
     different error status than the total failure case, so that this
     caller can tell it is a non-grave error, or

 (3) the dangling symref should actually make the fetch fail, as the
     remote repository is corrupt.

For now I'll take your patch, but this is something we may want to
clean-up in 1.6.0 timeframe.