Re: [PATCH 2/3] sha1-file: emit error if an alternate looks like a repository

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 5, 2018, 06:10 UTC
Message-ID: <20181205061035.GB12980@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqzhtkd4sz.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On Wed, Dec 05, 2018 at 12:35:08PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Since 26125f6b9b ("detect broken alternates.", 2006-02-22) we've
> > emitted an error if the alternates directory doesn't exist, but not
> > for the common misstep of adding a path to another git repository as
> > an alternate, as opposed to its "objects" directory.
> >
> > Let's check for this, i.e. whether X/objects or X/.git/objects exists
> > if the user supplies X and print an error (which as a commit leading
> > up to this one shows doesn't change the exit code, just "warns").
> 
> I agree that "Let's check for this" is a good idea, but do not
> necessarily agree with "i.e.".  Don't we have a helper that takes
> the path to an existing directory and answers "Yup, it does look
> like a Git repository"?  Using that is a lot more in line with what
> you claimed to do in the title for this patch.

Hmm. Yeah, one case this does not handle is when ".git" is a git-file pointing elsewhere, which should trigger the condition, too.

I think we can afford to be a bit loose with this check if it's just generating a warning for a case that would otherwise not work (and the worst is that we might fail to correctly diagnose a broken setup). But that I think points to another issue: this kicks in even if the path is otherwise usable.

So if had, say, a git repository whose worktree was full of objects and packfiles, it currently works for me to point to that as an alternate. But after this patch, we'd complain "wait, this looks like a git repo!".

So I'd much rather see the logic check first for something usable, and only when we fail to find it, start doing a loose diagnosis. Something like:

  if !is_directory($path)
	complain that it does not exist, as now
  else if !is_directory($path/pack)
	/*
	 * it doesn't look like an object directory; technically it
	 * _could_ just have loose objects, and maybe we ought to check
	 * for directories matching [0-9a-f]{2}, though it seems
	 * somewhat unlikely these days.
	 */
	if is_directory($path/objects) || exists($path/.git)
		complain that it looks like a git dir
	else
		complain that it doesn't look like an object dir
  fi

Hmm. I managed to write a gross mix of C and shell for my pseudocode, but hopefully you can read it. ;)

> I haven't read 3/3 yet, but as I said, I suspect it is reasonable to
> DWIM and use the object store associated with the directory we found
> to be a repository.

Yeah, I'm tempted by that, too, though I worry about corner cases. How much effort should we put into discovery? I guess the rules from enter_repo() would make sense, though the logic in that function would need some refactoring to be reused elsewhere.

-Peff