From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 05:58:44 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] revision: Show friendlier message.
Message-ID: <7vzk7sgcff.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vobo8hsee.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Leila Muhtasib <muhtasib@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> % mkdir test
>> % cd test
>> % git init
>> Initialized empty Git repository in .git/
>> % git log
>> fatal: bad default revision 'HEAD'
>
> I agree that the message, while it is technically correct and does
> not deserve to be called a bug, can be made more friendly.
>
> But setup_revisions() is a very low level routine that is used by
> many plumbing commands, and it is a horrible layering violation to
> tweak its behaviour based on argv[0] and also it is too inflexible
> hack as a solution.  For example, don't you want to give a different
> error message for "git log HEAD" with an explicit "HEAD" from the
> command line?  Would you add a similar support for a command that is
> not "log" by adding yet another strcmp() here?
>
> Wouldn't it be a more reasonable alternative solution if you do this:
>
>  1. Check if HEAD points at a commit _before_ setting opt->def to it
>     in "git log" (and other end-user facing programs in the "log"
>     family, possibly in cmd_log_init_finish() if that function is
>     not called by a program where the current message should not
>     change), and do _NOT_ set opt->def to it;

The last part of the paragraph should read:

	... and do _NOT_ set opt->def to it if HEAD does not point
	at a commit.