From: Tom Preston-Werner <tom@github.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 02:18:28 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] connect.c: add a way for git-daemon to pass an error back to client
Message-ID: <b97024a40810311918sca49d02g2dac46ca73e0fd87@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0811010316340.22125@pacific.mpi-cbg.de.mpi-cbg.de>

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 7:19 PM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> The cute trick with this is that even older clients would be able to
> display the error, albeit with a sort of funny message:
>
>        protocol error: expected sha/ref, got 'No matching repository.'

This is exactly what GitHub does right now with our custom Erlang
git-daemon. Try doing:

$ git clone git://github.com/mojombo/foo

and you'll get:

fatal: protocol error: expected sha/ref, got '
*********'

No matching repositories found.

*********'

This has cut down tremendously on the number of support requests we
get from new users. It would be nice to cut out the clutter from the
error message though.

Tom