Re: [PATCH] Allow hideRefs to match refs outside the namespace

Lukas Fleischer [off-list ref] writes:

Now, this cannot be intended behavior and I do not think this is
something we want to retain when improving that feature.

Yup, that makes me suspect that namespace support with hiderefs was
done without giving much thought even stronger than before, and the
fact that nobody has brought it up so far suggests it would be much
smaller deal than usual if a fix brings in incompatibilities to
those who use namespaces.

1. Define the (current) semantics of hideRefs pattern. It either needs
   to be defined to match full references or stripped references. Both
   definitions are equivalent when Git namespaces are not used.
   
   It probably makes sense to define hideRefs patterns to match stripped
   references.

OK.

2. Improve the documentation and describe the hideRefs semantics better.
3. Fix the send_ref() code in either receive-pack or upload-pack,
4. Improve hideRefs patterns and allow to match both full references and
5. Add a note on the change in behavior to the release notes of the

All OK.

The second thing I noticed is that having syntax for allowing matches
against both full references and stripped references is extremely handy
and desirable, even if we would not have to introduce it for backwards
compatibility. For example, using the syntax Junio described earlier, my
initial use case could be solved by

    receive.hideRefs=^refs/
    receive.hideRefs=!refs/

which means "Hide all references but do not hide references from the
current namespace." Here, I am assuming that patterns for stripped refs
never match anything outside the current namespace because those
patterns become NULL after stripping.

I would instead assume that the presence of ^ (or !^) in front would
signal "do not strip before checking".  !refs/ would mean "after
stripping, does it begin with refs/?  If so then do not hide it".

But that does not change the conclusion.  With ^refs/ that says
"hide everything that matches refs/ before stripping" (i.e. do not
include anything from anywhere), that is overriden by !refs/ that
says "but do not hide anything that matches refs/ after stripping"
(do include everything from my namespace), I'd think that you'd get
your desired behaviour.

Thanks.