Re: Suspected bug on `git -C <rp> rev-list --all` where <rp> has 0 commits

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 25, 2015, 09:07 UTC
Message-ID: <20151125090746.GC4696@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CA+izobv6OuAAjnKH5A=vcmJh3yDhWi41WAD-OmVSN2d7P_5SGA@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 10:56:50PM -0800, Atousa Duprat wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I agree with Yac that this error is unwarranted, though it's been like
> that since forever.
> If a repo is empty, git rev-list should probably just return without
> erroring out.
> The fix is trivial, if the list agrees that this is in fact legit.

I think we had a similar discussion for "git log" with an empty HEAD, and decided that it was better to keep the behavior the same for compatibility reasons. I think that would apply doubly for rev-list, which is used by scripts.

In the "log" case, we did improve the error message:

  $ git init
  $ git.v2.5.0 log
  fatal: bad default revision 'HEAD'
  $ git.v2.6.3 log
  fatal: your current branch 'master' does not have any commits yet

Maybe a good first step would be improving the error message?

-Peff