Re: [PATCH] bisect: improve error message when branch checkout fails

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 5, 2009, 09:46 UTC
Message-ID: <7vskknv3ec.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090404220226.58a3ac99.chriscool@tuxfamily.org>

Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> writes:

Show 19 quoted lines

> In "git-bisect.sh" the "git checkout" command is only used to
> change the current branch, but it is used like this:
>
> git checkout "$branch"
>
> which will output the following misleading error message when
> it fails:
>
> error: pathspec 'foo' did not match any file(s) known to git.
>
> This patch change the way we use "git checkout" like this:
>
> git checkout "$branch" --
>
> so that we will get the following error message:
>
> fatal: invalid reference: foo
>
> which is better.

Thanks; will apply.

But I think "git checkout" should either say "unknown branch" (assuming that most people switch branches, not detach HEAD), or "no such commit" (which could be a bit confusing for people who have not even heard of detached HEAD, but may be more technically correct).

"Invalid reference" does not help anybody and is not technically correct, either. A git newbie would say "Huh? what is a ref?" and a git savvy would say "I admit I made a typo, but you, the git checkout command, are supposed to take an arbitrary commit object, not necessarily a ref".