Re: git rebase --continue error message is misleading

From: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 13, 2024, 14:38 UTC
Message-ID: <534e8534-a9bd-428b-87f9-a512c9378b19@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALG+76eJL5dC3o+yq7zreoRDQan1MPgfNXB42k5f2iq2bZEbNw@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Björn

Thanks for reporting this

On 09/12/2024 13:02, Björn Lindqvist wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> $ LANG=C git rebase --continue
> hint: Waiting for your editor to close the file... error: cannot run
> vi: No such file or directory
> error: unable to start editor 'vi'
> Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

This line comes from "git commit" whenever launch_editor() fails. I wonder if we'd be better to recommend that the user sets up a working editor instead. The message is certainly unhelpful when we run "git commit" from "git cherry-pick/merge/rebase/revert" where we want to seed the message that the user edits.

Show 8 quoted lines

> error: could not commit staged changes.
> $ git rebase --continue -m "done"
> ...
> $ git rebase --continue -F "done ffs"
> ...
> 
> It should say: Please commit the staged changes using git commit -m
> "commit message"

I don't think that is a good idea when "git commit" is being run from "git rebase". In that case we want to preserve the original message and authorship and using '-F' or '-m' would not do that.

Best Wishes

Phillip