Re: BUG: Wrong error message when access to .git directory denied

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: May 29, 2015, 16:45 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZPTpJjLsKSd6E8vQ0HFuSeCH5Hr_LBhSjx9=SQdQhOBQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1thzfll9.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 8:29 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Jonas Berlin <xkr47@outerspace.dyndns.org> writes:
>
>> Severity: Low
>> Impact: Confusion
>
> ;-)
>
>> Git version: 1.9.1
>>
>> If I don't have permissions to access the .git folder of a non-bare
>> git repository, I get the following output:
>>
>>   fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
>>
>> Expected output:
>>
>>   fatal: Permission denied while accessing .git directory
>
> But the thing is, .git being unreadable simply means we do not know
> if it is a .git directory, or a random directory that does not have
> anything to do with Git that happens to have that name.
>
> So "Not a git repository" is the best Git can say.

fatal: Permission denied while accessing .git directory

does not imply we're having a git repository here at all, but rather sounds like "We wanted to check for you if this is a git repository, but we cannot do that as we lack permissions to do so.

So git doesn't know if it is inside a repo or not, so the actual error message "Not a git repository" is wrong. It's just that the current permissions cannot tell if we're in a repository or not.

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