Re: [PATCH v1 4/6] Expanded branch header for Porcelain Status V2

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jul 20, 2016, 20:54 UTC
Message-ID: <20160720205411.GB578@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <578FC0E8.4010102@jeffhostetler.com>

On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 02:20:24PM -0400, Jeff Hostetler wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> > IIRC, it happens when HEAD points to a broken ref. So something like:
> > 
> >    git init
> >    echo broken >.git/refs/heads/master
> > 
> > would cause resolving HEAD to return NULL.
> 
> That worked and I see "(unknown)".
> 
> This is a bit of a nit, but is there a value we'd like
> to see there, such as "(unknown)" or "(broken)" or "(missing)"
> in that case?  (And make it clear that this is a different
> case from "(detached)".)
> 
> I'm thinking it would be nicer to always have a field
> there for parsing.

My gut feeling is to err on the side of being vague, like "unknown". This is something that _shouldn't_ ever happen, and if it does, it could be a broken on-disk ref, a transient syscall error, or some other weirdness. I don't think we need to get too specific in this context (we'll likely have said something else useful on stderr already, I think).

-Peff