# git-svn dcommit losing/detaching head when commit message empty 3 messages from 2011-02-24 to 2011-02-27. Participants: Hin-Tak Leung, Eric Wong. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/26587 ## Hin-Tak Leung, 2011-02-24 01:27 Subject: git-svn dcommit losing/detaching head when commit message empty Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/AANLkTi%3DA-UG2aOcwwNbjoBK4pYDtKp%3D0nFmcwrgVv0f8%40mail.gmail.com ``` Hi, I have just encountered a small problem with git-svn dcommit, which while not fatal, were quite worrying as it resulted in a detached head(?) for a while. This is with git-1.7.4-1.fc14.x86_64 . What happened is that I was trying to cherry-pick from one svn branch (of commits from somebody else using genuine svn) into another svn branch and then do some fix-ups before dcommit to push into another svn branch. When dcommit'ing, it bombed out in the middle because one of the older cherry-picks has no/empty svn commit message. So it results into this message: ------------------- A repository hook failed: 'pre-commit' hook failed with error output: Please enter a commit message which details what has changed during this commit. at /usr/libexec/git-core/git-svn line 576 ------------------- That's fair enough and obvious enough, but then at that point, the index is at the pre-bomb, and the working directory is post-bomb, I think, and neither is HEAD of my working branch. This is quite worrying - I think if I had done 'git gc --prune=now --aggressive' at this point I would have lost my work? Luckily I had a "git log" display before, so I did "git checkout -b preserving_work sha1_of_working_branch_head" to keep it. So I did git rebase -i to edit the original commit messages to add something to them. (which arguably git-svn should do automatically? or empty messages really frowned upon? I always commit with at least a trivial message, but as I said, I was cherry-picking others' commits, whose development habits I have no control over) After I fixed that and continue as I intended, then there is another bomb-out, when git-svn complains about a git commit message of mine (with minor edit): ------------- Running perl -pi -e 's(sometag="original")(sometag="replacement")' directory/* ------------- being empty. On hind-sight, it is probably not a good idea to have perl regular expression code within a commit message (git-svn itself being in perl), but complaining about a non-empty commit message (and seem to be a valid one, no strange utf8/chinese characters, etc) being empty seems to be a bug. Hope this helps. BTW, git-svn is a great tool, and thanks a lot for that - I wouldn't use anything else (including the "authentic" svn client) to interact with svn repositories these days. Hin-Tak ``` ## Hin-Tak Leung, 2011-02-24 02:37 Subject: Re: git-svn dcommit losing/detaching head when commit message empty Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/AANLkTi%3DDk4VDkzE%3Dj%3DCCbkb6dUAQRKHT9xT6Oefn%2BUjd%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 1:27 AM, Hin-Tak Leung wrote: ... > After I fixed that and continue as I intended, then there is another > bomb-out, when git-svn complains about a git commit message of mine > (with minor edit): > ------------- > Running > perl -pi -e 's(sometag="original")(sometag="replacement")' directory/* > ------------- > being empty. On hind-sight, it is probably not a good idea to have > perl regular expression code within a commit message (git-svn itself > being in perl), but complaining about a non-empty commit message (and > seem to be a valid one, no strange utf8/chinese characters, etc) being > empty seems to be a bug. Just adding to this part: it appears that git-svn doesn't like the first-line of the commit message being just one word (in this case, "Running"). I have just done one where the commit message was a single word "renaming" (it would be obvious which file I was renaming, so I thought there is no need to say more), which also caused git-svn dcommit to complain about it being empty. Many thanks for git-svn - as I wrote below, I wouldn't use anything else these days. > Hope this helps. BTW, git-svn is a great tool, and thanks a lot for > that - I wouldn't use anything else (including the "authentic" svn > client) to interact with svn repositories these days. > > Hin-Tak > ``` ## Eric Wong, 2011-02-27 02:50 Subject: Re: git-svn dcommit losing/detaching head when commit message empty Message-ID: <20110227025039.GB26643@dcvr.yhbt.net> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20110227025039.GB26643%40dcvr.yhbt.net In-Reply-To: ``` Hin-Tak Leung wrote: > Hi, > > I have just encountered a small problem with git-svn dcommit, which > while not fatal, were quite worrying as > it resulted in a detached head(?) for a while. This is with > git-1.7.4-1.fc14.x86_64 . This is a known issue for a while that nobody's had time to get around to fixing just yet. I think setting aside a temporary branch should work... > Hope this helps. BTW, git-svn is a great tool, and thanks a lot for > that - I wouldn't use anything else (including the "authentic" svn > client) to interact with svn repositories these days. Thanks for the encouragement. I hardly need git svn nowadays so I need all the encouragement I can get to set aside time for it from other projects :) -- Eric Wong ```