Re: [PATCH v2 1/4] t1400: Avoid touching refs on filesystem

Patrick Steinhardt [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

For now, I think this is fine, but we'd probably clean it up so that
without --force update-ref would not corrupt the repository like
this.  When used with --force, or before adding such a safety
measure, how we test if we successfully corrupted the repository is
an interesting matter.  I'd say

	git update-ref --force --no-deref -d HEAD &&
	test_must_fail git show-ref --verify -q HEAD &&
	cp -f .git/HEAD.orig .git/HEAD &&
	git show-ref --verify -q "$m"

to ensure that other than removing HEAD and corrupting the
repository, it did not cause permanent damage by removing the
underlying ref, perhaps.

We may want to add some NEEDSWORK comment around such tests.

I think the proper way to do the test would be to create a non-mandatory
symref and delete it. That'd also be a nice preparation for the
`--force` parameter already.

Excellent.  Yes, the test is about creation and removal of a symref;
the symref used for testing does not have to be the HEAD.

Thanks.