Re: Reference has invalid format: check maybe a bit to harsh?

Peter Oberndorfer [off-list ref] writes:

The invalid refs(about 30, loose and packed) containing a ':' were created by 
stgit a long time ago(Dec 2006)

I think even back then colon was one of the forbidden letters in a
refname. Of course, it is entirely possible that broken third-party tools
may have created such file that is not a ref in .git/refs hierarchy by
hand, and we may not be carefully rejecting such broken refs for a long
time.

    ... Goes and asks "git blame" ...

03feddd (git-check-ref-format: reject funny ref names., 2005-10-13)
started disallowing control characters and other characters that are used
for range operators and the separator between LHS and RHS of refspecs,
further tightened by 6828399 (Forbid pattern maching characters in
refnames., 2005-12-15).

But i'm just wondering if dieing when seeing a single invalid ref might be a 
bit too harsh since no git tools can be used anymore on this repo at all.

I agree that we would want to give users an escape hatch.  That is, if we
can make something like this to work:

    c=$(git rev-parse --force refs/patches/obd_development/blah:_vari...)
    git update-ref refs/patches/obd_development/blah--various-improvements $c

I think we would be in a good shape.