Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

I don't know what all of it means. The "%s" thing was short to
implement, but the real source of the extra complications is using
repo_dwim_ref() to do the resolution. But I think the overall direction
is more consistent with how the rest of Git behaves.

Yeah, I tend to agree.  As long as we do not hardcode the
prefixing of "refs/remotes/", we won't paint ourselves into a corner
we cannot get out of, I guess.

Thanks.