Re: [PATCH 4/6] update-ref: utilize rejected error details if available
- From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
- Date
- Jan 14, 2026, 17:55 UTC
- Message-ID
- <20260114175558.GG885771@coredump.intra.peff.net>
- In-Reply-To
- <xmqqpl7cf6kf.fsf@gitster.g>
On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 09:27:28AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
Show 29 quoted lines
> Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > @@ -573,16 +573,18 @@ static void print_rejected_refs(const char *refname,
> > const char *old_target,
> > const char *new_target,
> > enum ref_transaction_error err,
> > - const char *details UNUSED,
> > + const char *details,
> > void *cb_data UNUSED)
> > {
> > struct strbuf sb = STRBUF_INIT;
> > - const char *reason = ref_transaction_error_msg(err);
> >
> > - strbuf_addf(&sb, "rejected %s %s %s %s\n", refname,
> > - new_oid ? oid_to_hex(new_oid) : new_target,
> > - old_oid ? oid_to_hex(old_oid) : old_target,
> > - reason);
> > + if (details)
> > + strbuf_addf(&sb, "%s\n", details);
> > + else
> > + strbuf_addf(&sb, "rejected %s %s %s %s\n", refname,
> > + new_oid ? oid_to_hex(new_oid) : new_target,
> > + old_oid ? oid_to_hex(old_oid) : old_target,
> > + ref_transaction_error_msg(err));
>
> Could "details" reported from the lower layer be less detailed than
> what we are formulating here, like updating the value of what ref
> from what old object to what new object, or what the err code tells
> the end-user?I wondered that, too, but also: is this supposed to be machine-readable? The "rejected ..." output looks like something that could be parsed, and it seems to be documented in git-update-ref(1).
Side note: if this is meant to be a stable format, surely there should be some coverage in the test suite? There doesn't seem to be.
So should we just be replacing the ref_transaction_error_msg() part? I _think_ the low-level details will usually be more informative there, but not necessarily. So possibly we'd even want to show both, though I suspect just concatenating them would be messy.
Plus the "details" one has a lot of redundant information in it (it mentions "refname", even though it is already on the "rejected" line).
In the short-term, I wonder if we just want:
if (details && *details)
error("%s", details);That gets us back to the status quo, where the details are at least available via stderr. And then we can consider how to combine them into the machine-readable format separately.
-Peff