Re: git branch --editdescription fatal error

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Jan 6, 2017, 19:43 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZOfHWP_pQGN1QcmR71Ft6ib0aPwNKX80YMT7KcK0_Stg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAN0XMO+zzYOXF2gwr=0Tu-7T5BH7f_L+FhfD8RUenDeq3xFHjA@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 11:31 AM, Ralf Thielow <ralf.thielow@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> 2017-01-06 18:55 GMT+01:00 Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>:
>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 9:25 AM, Jake Lambert <jake@onahill.co> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> When executing "git branch <branch> --edit-description" on a branch with no description set, I get "fatal: could not unset 'branch.<branch>.description". It would seem that the unsetting piece should occur only after checking if it was set in the first place.
>>
>> That seems strange. Is it possible that your config is not writable?
>> (.git/config, ~/gitconfig, you'd need to find out where the <branch>
>> is configured already via git config --global/--system/--local --list)
>>
>
> Have you actually tried to reproduce this issue? I'm on current next
> and can reproduce the problem.

eh, I was on $random_version that I currently have installed (with messed up submodule code, but otherwise close to master).

this gives hope that a bisect between master..next will give us a culprit?

>
> I think removing things that don't exist should behave the same like
> removing things that do exist, with
> a success.

I am not sure. Consider the tool "rm"

    $ rm no_exist
    rm: cannot remove ‘no_exist’: No such file or directory
    $ echo $?
    1

You have to use the --force.

For this specific use case I agree we should then set the force flag to let the the removal of the config option succeed no matter if it existed before.

Stefan