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NAME

git rename-remote-branch - Rename a remote branch without requiring a local checkout

SYNOPSIS

git rename-remote-branch [options] <repository> <old_branch> <new_branch>

options:
  --verbose|-v        increase verbosity (can be used multiple times)
  --quiet|-q          decrease verbosity completely
  --receive-pack-git  override the executable run on the remote side.
  --help              this message
  --man               show the man page

DESCRIPTION

git rename-remote-branch renames a branch in a remote repository without requiring a local checkout or downloading refs.

This works similarly to the low-level command git upload-pack, except that git rename-remote-branch creates and sends an empty PACK file.

Only ssh format repositories are supported : [user@]host:path/to/repo.git

Upon connection, the remote sends a welcome message contraining the SHA for each branch. The remote will ignore any input sent before this message is completed.

This program parses the welcome message and extracts the SHA for <old_branch> and verifies that <new_branch> does not exist.

This program then crafts a message to create the new branch and delete the old branch. This messages is encoded in pack_line format and sent to the remote along with a specially crafted empty_pack_file.

The server then responds with an "unpack ok" message, followed by and "ok <branch>" message for each branch referenced in the sent message.

OPTIONS

  • --verbose|-v

    Increase debug level

  • --quiet|-q

    Display no messages (sets DEBUG = -1)

  • --receive-pack-git|--exec

    Takes a string argument representing an alternate git-receive-pack exeutable to run on the remote host.

    See the documentation for git send-pack for more details.

  • --help

    Prints a brief help message and exits.

  • --man

    Prints the manual page and exits.

ENVIRONMENT

  • GIT_SSH

    Choose an alternate ssh binary. Defaults to ssh

  • DEBUG

    Override the default DEBUG level. This can also be accomplished using --verbose or --quiet.

DEFINITIONS

Rename branch message

<empty_sha> <old_branch_sha> <new_branch>\0<options>
<old_branch_sha> <empty_sha> <old_branch>
""
<empty_pack_file>

Example:

0001

0000
PACK

where <empty_sha> is a string of 40 zeros.

Pack_line format

Each message in pack_line format is prefixed with a 4 byte length in hex, followed by the message. The length inclues the 4 bytes of prefix.

Messages may end with a newline, but this must be included in the length. The server is required to treat messages with or without newlines equivalently.

Examples:

0010hello world\n
000Fhello world

The blank message of 0004 is not allowed.

0000 is used as a sync message.

Message in pack_line format

Connects to remote Verified that <old_branch> exists and <new_branch> does not.

Empty pack file

The documentation for the git message protocol specify that an empty pack file must be sent when deleting a branch. In reality, git push and git send-pack do not include a PACK file at all when sending a delete command.

When creating a branch, a normal PACK file is created showing the state of the current repository.

It is possible to create and construct a valid packfile containing zero entries. This ability is not exposed anywhere in the git libraries. The closest is git send_pack, which uses git pack-ref to create the pack file to send with the reference sha messages. The logic for building the messages and packfile and ending them are all hiddne behind a single api function. If no refs are provided, git pack-ref will exit without creating a packfile rather than create one with zero items.

Git pack file has a format consisting of a 4 character header "PACK" followed by the version (2 or 3) and the number of objects, both encoded in network byte order. The pack file then contains a 20 byte SHA hash of that message. This seems very simple but was very difficult to find and test.

my $EMPTY_PACK = pack("A4NN", "PACK", 2, 0);
$EMPTY_PACK .= sha1($EMPTY_PACK);