Re: Updating shared ref from remote helper, or fetch hook

Jed Brown [off-list ref] writes:

I'm working on an hg remote helper that uses git notes for the sha1
revision, so that git users can more easily refer to specific commits
when communicating with hg users.  Since there may be multiple
concurrent fast-import streams, I write the notes to a private ref
(refs/notes/hg-REMOTE), to be merged eventually using

  git notes --ref hg merge hg-REMOTE*

A related issue is that when a remote helper replies to an 'import' with
_only_ a commit in refs/notes/, git (fetch or pull) produces an error
message like

  error: refs/notes/hg-84b3865b750a567acb16929c21e14c4a45a5639b does not point to a valid object

but successfully updates the ref (which is indeed valid) and returns
0. I have not been able to determine what exactly git thinks is
invalid. As long as there is at least one non-notes commit in the
stream, no such error message is produced.

Is this behavior intended?