> Linus shouldn't have used SHA-1 in the first place, it was already being deprecated by the time git got its original release.

Using SHA-1 to begin with was fine. However, commit hashes should have been prepended with a version byte to make it easier to transition to the next hash algorithm.

This would mean an old Git client could report an error to the user of the nature “please upgrade your software to support cloning from this Git server” instead of failing with an error that’s inseparable from “the Git server is broken” when trying to clone a Git repo using SHA-256.