Re: can we prevent reflog deletion when branch is deleted?

On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Ramkumar Ramachandra [off-list ref] wrote:

Jeff King wrote:

quoted

Why don't the branch names have significance? If I deleted branch "foo"
yesterday evening, wouldn't I want to be able to say "show me foo from
2pm yesterday" or even "show me all logs for foo, so that I can pick the
useful bit from the list"?

Oh, I misunderstood then.  I didn't realize that your usecase was actually

    git log foo@{yesterday}

where foo is a deleted branch.  Just to give some perspective, so we
don't limit our problem space:

I only ever batch-delete "cold" branches: if I haven't touched a
branch in ~2 months, I consider the work abandoned (due to disinterest
or otherwise) and remove it.  Most of my branches are short-lived, and
I don't remember branch names, much less of the names of the cold
branches I deleted.  My usecase for a graveyeard is "I lost something,
and I need to find it": I don't want to have to remember the original
branch name "foo"; if you can tell everything I deleted yesterday, I
can spot foo and the commit I was looking for.  The HEAD reflog is
almost good enough for me.

I think I'd have to be playing with *several* branches simultaneously
before I got to the point of forgetting the branch name!

More to the point, your use case may be relevant for a non-bare repo
where "work" is being done, but for a bare repo on a server, I think
the branch name *does* have significance, because it's what people are
collaborating on.

(Imagine someone accidentally nukes a branch, and then someone else
tries to "git pull" and finds it gone.  Any recovery at that point
must necessarily use the branch name).

PS: I am assuming core.logAllRefUpdates is on