From: Kaartic Sivaraam Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:29:23 GMT Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2 4/4] setup: communicate why a directory is not a valid git directory Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On 9/30/26 21:33, Patrick Steinhardt wrote: > On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 03:55:10PM +0530, Kaartic Sivaraam wrote: >> At the moment, there are a few scenarios in which the error message >> surrounding an invalid Git repository is a bit blunt: >> >> $ GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY=/does/not/exist git --git-dir repo.git rev-parse --is-bare-repository >> fatal: not a git repository: 'repo.git' >> >> In this case, even though repo.git is a valid Git repository, >> we get an output saying it is not since the GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY >> does not point to a valid object directory. At the moment, the >> user is on their own in figuring this out. >> >> Instead, make it more easy for users to figure such issues > > s/more easy/easier/ > Ah. Will correct. >> particularly in cases where they have explicitly specified >> a Git directory. This intends to improve the error reporting UX >> by clarifying why the specified repository is not considered valid. > > Which I think is a good motivation. > >> We achieve this by means of using the new helper >> is_git_directory_verbose() that has been introduced. With the >> same, we get a more helpful error message as follows: >> >> $ GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY=/does/not/exist git --git-dir repo.git rev-parse --is-bare-repository >> fatal: not a git repository: 'repo.git' >> reason: cannot access object directory '/does/not/exist' set via $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY > > Having a separate "reason:" line feels a bit off to me, but that may be > subjective. I'd have preferred to have it on the same line, or maybe > first have "error:" followed by "fatal:". > Hmm. Let me think which of these I could adopt. Thank you for the suggestion. >> diff --git a/setup.c b/setup.c >> index a0fb68f7f6..a0d3c0c5bb 100644 >> --- a/setup.c >> +++ b/setup.c >> @@ -1195,6 +1195,7 @@ static void repo_discover_explicit_gitdir(struct repo_discovery *discovery, >> int *nongit_ok) >> { >> const char *work_tree_env = getenv(GIT_WORK_TREE_ENVIRONMENT); >> + struct strbuf invalid_gitdir_reason = STRBUF_INIT; > > Nit, please feel free to ignore: I'd just have called this `errbuf`. > Noted. -- Sivaraam