Re: Problem: `fatal: too-short tree object` when executing hash-object on tree

From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: Aug 31, 2023, 17:10 UTC
Message-ID: <defa2a66-598e-4721-a644-680de0116dec@kdbg.org>
In-Reply-To: <0de414f8-f409-467f-a504-06a78f088981@app.fastmail.com>

Am 31.08.23 um 12:58 schrieb Gareth Hayes:

> Problem: I'm trying to reproduce the identifier of a tree object using `git cat-file -p <tree object identifier> | git hash-object -t tree --stdin`

XY-problem alert!?

Show 8 quoted lines

> This results in an error:
> `fatal: too-short tree object`
> 
> To replicate: 
> `git cat-file -p HEAD`
> `git cat-file -p <tree object identifier from output of above> | git hash-object -t tree --stdin`
> 
> This works for other object types but not trees. What am I doing wrong?

Recall that the -p in cat-file means "pretty" (-print). The data that makes up a tree object is far from pretty, hence, you can't feed it into git hash-object directly.

You can either turn the pretty-printed input into a tree object

   git cat-file -p $treeoid | git mktree

or hash the raw data

   git cat-file tree $treeoid | git hash-object -t tree --stdin

-- Hannes