Re: Can I fetch an arbitrary commit by sha1?

Jeff King wrote:

But I think Christian is arguing that the client side should complain
that $sha1 is not a remote ref, and therefore not something we can
fetch.  This used to be the behavior until 6e7b66e (fetch: fetch objects
by their exact SHA-1 object names, 2013-01-29). The idea there is that
some refs may be kept "hidden" from the ref advertisement, but clients
who learn about the sha1 out-of-band may fetch the tips of hidden refs.

I'm not sure it is a feature that has been particularly well-used to
date, though.

I use it pretty often.  The commits I'm fetching are pointed to
directly by refs, but I don't care about what the ref is called and I
want exactly that commit.

The context is that the commit is mentioned in the gerrit web UI.
Fetching by commit name feels simpler than getting the
refs/changes/something ref, since I think in terms of commits instead
of in terms of change numbers.

Thanks and hope that helps,
Jonathan