Re: `git mv` has ambiguous error message for non-existing target

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 16, 2012, 01:34 UTC
Message-ID: <7vehju8h5j.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <50A53A80.4080203@gmx.de>

Patrick Lehner <lehner.patrick@gmx.de> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> To reproduce:
> - cd into a git repo
> - assuming "filea.txt" is an existing file in the CWD, and "dirb" is
> neither a file nor a directory in the CWD, use the command "git mv
> filea.txt dirb/filea.txt"
> - this will produce an error message like `fatal: renaming 'filea.sh'
> failed: No such file or directory`
>
> It does not mention that the problem is, in fact, the target directory
> not existing. This seems to be mostly a problem for users unfamiliar
> with bash/*nix console commands. Although it is documented that git mv
> will not create intermediate folders (which is fine, because neither
> does mv), the error message might lead to believe a problem exists
> with the source file.

    $ rm -fr xxx
    $ >yyy
    $ mv yyy xxx/yyy
    mv: cannot move `yyy' to `xxx/yyy': No such file or directory

It doesn't mention that the problem is with 'xxx' and not 'yyy' either.