Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] mv: check for missing destination directory before renaming

From: Lucas Zamboni Orioli <lucaszam0@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 23, 2026, 21:38 UTC
Message-ID: <CAH01Q-_2APONq2fXmjF=Wo08rTzScMEjyXL-G=_GH6TbjJmTBw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqo6fximn2.fsf@gitster.g>

Show 7 quoted lines

> lstat() can succeed and 'dir_st' may indicate something other than a
> directory (for example, a symbolic link or a regular file).
> Alternatively, it can fail with ENOTDIR when, for example, 'dst_dir'
> is 'a/b/c' and 'a/b' is a file rather than a directory.
>
> Both cases will cause 'git mv' into a path assumed to be a directory
> to fail.  Shouldn't we handle these conditions as well?

Yes, agreed, both should be handled. For v3 I switched from lstat() to stat() so that the check follows symlinks the same way rename() does, and I handle the non-directory cases:

stat() failing with ENOENT or ENOTDIR (missing directory, or a leading path component that is a file) reports "destination directory does not exist".

stat() succeeding on something that is not a directory reports "destination is not a directory".

Other stat() errors fall through to rename(), which reports them as before.

For the messages I used the existing "destination directory does not exist" string for the missing case and added one new string, "destination is not a directory", for the non-directory case. I'm happy to collapse these into a single message instead if you'd prefer to avoid the extra translatable string, let me know.