Re: [PATCH 2/5] describe: error if blob not found
From: René Scharfe <hidden>
Date: 2025-08-19 18:32:06
On 8/18/25 11:01 PM, Jeff King wrote:
If describe_blob() does not find the blob in question, it returns an empty strbuf, and we print an empty line. This differs from describe_commit(), which always either returns an answer or calls die() itself. As the blob function was bolted onto the command afterwards, I think its behavior is not intentional, and it is just a bug that it does not report an error. Signed-off-by: Jeff King <redacted> --- This one is perhaps the most controversial, as it is a change in behavior. But the current behavior just really seems like a bug to me. Unlike what René posted earlier, I didn't record the dst strbuf's original size and compare against that. This is a static function with only one caller that passes in an empty strbuf, so being overly defensive didn't seem worth it
Makes sense.
(arguably these functions should just return an allocated buffer anyway).
Or even print results directly.
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
builtin/describe.c | 3 +++ t/t6120-describe.sh | 6 ++++++ 2 files changed, 9 insertions(+)diff --git a/builtin/describe.c b/builtin/describe.c index 383d3e6b9a..06e413d937 100644 --- a/builtin/describe.c +++ b/builtin/describe.c@@ -535,6 +535,9 @@ static void describe_blob(const struct object_id *oid, struct strbuf *dst) reset_revision_walk(); release_revisions(&revs); strvec_clear(&args); + + if (!dst->len) + die(_("blob '%s' not reachable from HEAD"), oid_to_hex(oid));
I like the clarity and precision of this message. The rest of the patches look good to me as well. The first is a nice little bonus. René
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
} static void describe(const char *arg, int last_one)diff --git a/t/t6120-describe.sh b/t/t6120-describe.sh index 256ccaefb7..470631d17d 100755 --- a/t/t6120-describe.sh +++ b/t/t6120-describe.sh@@ -409,6 +409,12 @@ test_expect_success 'describe tag object' ' test_grep "fatal: test-blob-1 is neither a commit nor blob" actual ' +test_expect_success 'describe an unreachable blob' ' + blob=$(echo not-found-anywhere | git hash-object -w --stdin) && + test_must_fail git describe $blob 2>actual && + test_grep "blob .$blob. not reachable from HEAD" actual +' + test_expect_success ULIMIT_STACK_SIZE 'name-rev works in a deep repo' ' i=1 && while test $i -lt 8000