Re: git branch --editdescription fatal error

From: Ralf Thielow <ralf.thielow@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 6, 2017, 19:31 UTC
Message-ID: <CAN0XMO+zzYOXF2gwr=0Tu-7T5BH7f_L+FhfD8RUenDeq3xFHjA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kaz_hS9P7vqV9EhZazM_g0OUdRfMtFPJ7gFu-h-ku=NKw@mail.gmail.com>

2017-01-06 18:55 GMT+01:00 Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>:

Show 9 quoted lines

> 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.

It seems Git is not happy with unsetting non-existent configs. And at least the following piece of code seems to be there since 10bea152a (Add functions git_config_set() and git_config_set_multivar(), 2005-11-17).

config.c:2212 /* if nothing to unset, or too many matches, error out */ if ((store.seen == 0 && value == NULL) ||

I wonder why it's an error to remove something that doesn't exist except the case we 'know' it exists because of further actions. I don't think this is a thing, though. Just for the record: `git config --unset branch.$branch.description` does return with code "5" here as well.

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

Ralf