Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] scalar reconfigure: help users remove buggy repos

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 25, 2023, 18:05 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqsf8780bm.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <f751dc4d-b605-43ef-8b73-082e8acd5914@github.com>

Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com> writes:

Show 31 quoted lines

> On 8/22/2023 3:45 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> "Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> +		switch (discover_git_directory_reason(&commondir, &gitdir)) {
>>> +		case GIT_DIR_INVALID_OWNERSHIP:
>>> +			warning(_("repository at '%s' has different owner"), dir);
>>> +			goto loop_end;
>>> +
>>> +		case GIT_DIR_DISCOVERED:
>>> +			succeeded = 1;
>>> +			break;
>>> +
>>> +		default:
>>> +			warning(_("repository not found in '%s'"), dir);
>>> +			break;
>> 
>> Among the error cases, INVALID_OWNERSHIP is one of the possibilities
>> that merits specialized message to the end-user.  I wonder if others
>> also deserve to be explained, though.
>
> The specific choice of GIT_DIR_INVALID_OWNERSHIP is singled out
> because it's a new-ish reason and is the most confusing to users
> when things fail for this reason.
>  
>>  - HIT_CEILING and HIT_MOUNT_POINT will happen when there is no
>>    usable repository between "dir" and the specified ceiling.
>
> These are basically "didn't find a Git repo" but there are different
> reasons why Git stopped looking. I'm not sure there is something more
> valuable to indicate here than the "repository not found" message
> that already exists.

OK. I just know that "not found" will be greeted by "stupid Git, if you go one level up, there is a .git/ directory!", now we have many users than we used to have and people forget what they configured.

But I think it would apply much less to users who see "repository not found" in the "scalar reconfigure" than ones who manually created a repository, and then forgot that they shuffled the disks around with cross mounting. So I agree with you that it is not essential to mention these reasons in this codepath (and setup_git_directory() does have a reasonable message for at least the mount-point case that covers the more general case).

Show 5 quoted lines

>>  - INVALID_GITFILE and INVALID_FORMAT are signs of some repository
>>    corruption.
>
> I can add a message for this kind of error, which seems helpful to
> point out to a user.

Maybe.  We can do that in a follow-up topic separately.

Thanks.