Re: [PATCH 1/1] builtin/show-ref: treat directory directory as non-existing in --exists

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Jan 10, 2024, 14:36 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cTRHHJ3pzWJtVJf8rKhvAJFYqrO0JsyTRTi6T5s+gznDg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20240110141559.387815-2-toon@iotcl.com>

On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 9:19 AM Toon Claes <toon@iotcl.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Recently [1] the option --exists was added to git-show-ref(1). When you
> use this option against a ref that doesn't exist, but it is a parent
> directory of an existing ref, you're getting the following error:
>
>     $ git show-ref --exists refs/heads
>     error: failed to look up reference: Is a directory
>
> This error is confusing to the user. Instead, print the same error as
> when the ref was not found:
>
>     error: reference does not exist
>
> Signed-off-by: Toon Claes <toon@iotcl.com>

It may not be worth a reroll, but I found the explanation you gave in the cover letter more illuminating than what is written above for explaining why this change is desirable. In particular, the discussion of the reftable backend was very helpful.