Re: Useless error message?

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 22, 2010, 10:38 UTC
Message-ID: <20100422103830.GB701@progeny.tock>
In-Reply-To: <4BD0247A.4080103@op5.se>

Andreas Ericsson wrote:

> On 04/22/2010 12:15 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

>> (*) $ git clone git://git.example.com/~u/foo
>>      remote: Cannot read the specified repo

[...]

> So that would be the new error message for everything that fails, then?

No. Of course, the opposite is the point. I just mean there should be an error message for all conditions that are lumped together with ENOENT to avoid information disclosure. I don’t care much how the message is phrased.

> If you have the wrong
> repo address, you'd still have to check up with whoever gave it to
> you to get it right. If it *does* crash, you'd still have to get
> hold of the server admin to tell him that it has crashed.

Many things can go wrong other than a missing repo. For example, there might be objects missing, or high load, or memory corruption.

In the “wrong address” case, I know who to go to to fix it: ask the person who gave me the address.

In the “corrupt repository” case, I should go to the repository owner.

In the “server hung up without any good reason” case, I should try to narrow down the problem, perhaps with the help of the server admin or my network administrator. Is it really so unusual to want to distinguish this from other cases?

Without code this is all theoretical anyway. And that’s the real problem: to the uninitiated, it is not easy to write code to try this out because the side band is not set up in time.

Sigh, Jonathan