Re: [PATCH/RFC] revision: Show friendlier message.

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Leila Muhtasib [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

% mkdir test
% cd test
% git init
Initialized empty Git repository in .git/
% git log
fatal: bad default revision 'HEAD'

I agree that the message, while it is technically correct and does
not deserve to be called a bug, can be made more friendly.

But setup_revisions() is a very low level routine that is used by
many plumbing commands, and it is a horrible layering violation to
tweak its behaviour based on argv[0] and also it is too inflexible
hack as a solution.  For example, don't you want to give a different
error message for "git log HEAD" with an explicit "HEAD" from the
command line?  Would you add a similar support for a command that is
not "log" by adding yet another strcmp() here?

Wouldn't it be a more reasonable alternative solution if you do this:

 1. Check if HEAD points at a commit _before_ setting opt->def to it
    in "git log" (and other end-user facing programs in the "log"
    family, possibly in cmd_log_init_finish() if that function is
    not called by a program where the current message should not
    change), and do _NOT_ set opt->def to it;

The last part of the paragraph should read:

	... and do _NOT_ set opt->def to it if HEAD does not point
	at a commit.