describe: catch unborn branch in describe_blob()

When describing a blob, we search for it by traversing from HEAD. We do
this by feeding the name HEAD to setup_revisions(). But if we are on an
unborn branch, this will fail with a confusing message:

  $ git describe $blob
  fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
  Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
  'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'

It is OK for this to be an error (we cannot find $blob in an empty
traversal, so we'd eventually complain about that). But the error
message could be more helpful.

Let's resolve HEAD ourselves and pass the resolved object id to
setup_revisions(). If resolving fails, then we can print a more useful
message.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

diff --git a/builtin/describe.c b/builtin/describe.c
index 06e413d9375864507edddcc6afe3148b99ffba3b..f7bea3c8c5ebab55c234e8f6a383b5c570173ff7 100644 (file)
--- a/builtin/describe.c
+++ b/builtin/describe.c
@@ -518,10 +518,16 @@ static void describe_blob(const struct object_id *oid, struct strbuf *dst)
 {
        struct rev_info revs;
        struct strvec args = STRVEC_INIT;
+       struct object_id head_oid;
        struct process_commit_data pcd = { *null_oid(the_hash_algo), oid, dst, &revs};
 
+       if (repo_get_oid(the_repository, "HEAD", &head_oid))
+               die(_("cannot search for blob '%s' on an unborn branch"),
+                   oid_to_hex(oid));
+
        strvec_pushl(&args, "internal: The first arg is not parsed",
-                    "--objects", "--in-commit-order", "--reverse", "HEAD",
+                    "--objects", "--in-commit-order", "--reverse",
+                    oid_to_hex(&head_oid),
                     NULL);
 
        repo_init_revisions(the_repository, &revs, NULL);

diff --git a/t/t6120-describe.sh b/t/t6120-describe.sh
index 470631d17d1c5c4ca27a391479da353fb2af561c..feec57bcbc577a2d055e2ed1ddef02bb4877ce84 100755 (executable)
--- a/t/t6120-describe.sh
+++ b/t/t6120-describe.sh
@@ -415,6 +415,14 @@ test_expect_success 'describe an unreachable blob' '
        test_grep "blob .$blob. not reachable from HEAD" actual
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'describe blob on an unborn branch' '
+       oldbranch=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD) &&
+       test_when_finished "git symbolic-ref HEAD $oldbranch" &&
+       git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/does-not-exist &&
+       test_must_fail git describe test-blob 2>actual &&
+       test_grep "cannot search .* on an unborn branch" actual
+'
+
 test_expect_success ULIMIT_STACK_SIZE 'name-rev works in a deep repo' '
        i=1 &&
        while test $i -lt 8000