remote does not support deleting refs

Hi,

I tried to setup a central git repository. Access is via ssh. How do I delete a remote branch? If I try it using

I get the error

To ssh://myserver.com/my/path/to/repository
! [rejected] testbranch (remote does not support deleting refs)
error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://myserver.com/my/path/to/repository'

So how do I setup my remote repository to allow deleting remote branches?

Thanks,
Martin

What version of Git do you use on the server? I think Git before v1.5 does not support deleting remote refs. You have to upgrade Git on your server.

Dmitry

Hi,

it seems that an old verison on the remote site was the problem:
On debian/etch git seems to be too old. I upgraded git to the testing version and now I can delete remote branches.

But I get another error:

$ git push origin :testbranch
To ssh://myserver.com/my/path/to/repository
 - [deleted]         testbranch
error: unlink(.git/refs/remotes/origin/testbranch) failed: No such file or directory
error: Failed to delete

Any idea?

Thanks,
Martin

Hi,

[please do not top post]

It is harmless. It is just that "git push origin :refs/heads/testbranch" cannot remove your local reference to that branch because you already have removed it by running "git branch -d -r origin/testbranch"

Normally you just run "git push origin :refs/heads/testbranch" without "git branch -d -r origin/testbranch" and then you will not have this error.

Dmitry

It is harmless, but it still feels a little wrong to scare the user with that message, especially since "Failed to delete" is ambiguous; it looks like the main operation, deleting the remote ref, failed. But it didn't; the operation that failed was something not even explicitly asked for.

How about this cleanup:

-- >8 --
make deleting a missing ref more quiet

If git attempts to delete a ref, but the unlink of the ref file fails, we print a message to stderr. This is usually a good thing, but if the error is ENOENT, then it indicates that the ref has _already_ been deleted. And since that's our goal, it doesn't make sense to complain to the user.

This harmonizes the error reporting behavior for the unpacked and packed cases; the packed case already printed nothing on ENOENT, but the unpacked printed unconditionally.

Additionally, send-pack would, when deleting the tracking ref corresponding to a remote delete, print "Failed to delete" on any failure. This can be a misleading message, since we actually _did_ delete at the remote side, but we failed to delete locally. Rather than make the message more precise, let's just eliminate it entirely; the delete_ref routine already takes care of printing out a much more specific message about what went wrong.

---
 builtin-send-pack.c          |    3 +--
 refs.c                       |    2 +-
 t/t5404-tracking-branches.sh |    7 +++++++
 3 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

index d76260c..a708d0a 100644
@@ -226,8 +226,7 @@ static void update_tracking_ref(struct remote *remote, struct ref *ref)
 		if (args.verbose)
 			fprintf(stderr, "updating local tracking ref '%s'\n", rs.dst);
 		if (ref->deletion) {
-			if (delete_ref(rs.dst, NULL))
-				error("Failed to delete");
+			delete_ref(rs.dst, NULL);
 		} else
 			update_ref("update by push", rs.dst,
 					ref->new_sha1, NULL, 0, 0);

index 6c6e9e5..39a3b23 100644
@@ -925,7 +925,7 @@ int delete_ref(const char *refname, const unsigned char *sha1)
 		i = strlen(lock->lk->filename) - 5; /* .lock */
 		lock->lk->filename[i] = 0;
 		err = unlink(lock->lk->filename);
-		if (err) {
+		if (err && errno != ENOENT) {
 			ret = 1;
 			error("unlink(%s) failed: %s",
 			      lock->lk->filename, strerror(errno));

index 1493a92..64fe261 100755
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ test_expect_success 'setup' '
 	git commit -m 1 &&
 	git branch b1 &&
 	git branch b2 &&
+	git branch b3 &&
 	git clone . aa &&
 	git checkout b1 &&
 	echo b1 >>file &&

@@ -50,4 +51,10 @@ test_expect_success 'deleted branches have their tracking branches removed' '
 	test "$(git rev-parse origin/b1)" = "origin/b1"
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'already deleted tracking branches ignored' '
+	git branch -d -r origin/b3 &&
+	git push origin :b3 >output 2>&1 &&
+	! grep error output
+'
+
 test_done

1.5.6.2.381.ga86b

Ack.