Re: [PATCH] blame: display a more helpful error message if the file was deleted

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com> writes:

> `git blame 22414770 generate-cmdlist.perl` currently results in:
>     fatal: cannot stat path '22414770': No such file or directory
>
> This patch changes the error message to:
>     fatal: ambiguous argument 'generate-cmdlist.perl': unknown revision
>     or path not in the working tree.
>     Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
>     'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'"
>
> That way, the user knows to rewrite the command as
> `git blame 22414770 -- generate-cmdlist.perl`.

It is unfortunate that the command line parser of 'blame' needs to
cater to an oddball syntax, 'git annotate <path> [<rev>]'.

This change still makes us emit the following funny errors:

    $ ./git blame 00000000 generate-cmdlist.prel
    fatal: bad revision 'generate-cmdlist.prel'
    $ ./git blame generate-cmdlist.prel 00000000
    fatal: bad revision '00000000'

and gives the users a wrong impression that the early argument is
the path and then comes the revision.

I'll take the patch as-is, because the original is not better, i.e.

    $ git blame 00000000 generate-cmdlist.prel
    fatal: cannot stat path '00000000': No such file or directory
    $ git blame generate-cmdlist.prel 00000000
    fatal: cannot stat path 'generate-cmdlist.prel': No such file or directory

and the change is not making things worse.

But I think in the longer term we should deprecate and eventually
remove 'git annotate' with its odd syntax, so that we can lose the
special case we have in the command line parser of 'git blame'.

Thanks.

>
> Signed-off-by: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
> ---
>  builtin/blame.c | 2 --
>  1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/builtin/blame.c b/builtin/blame.c
> index 1df13cf..f070272 100644
> --- a/builtin/blame.c
> +++ b/builtin/blame.c
> @@ -2683,8 +2683,6 @@ parse_done:
>  		argv[argc - 1] = "--";
>  
>  		setup_work_tree();
> -		if (!file_exists(path))
> -			die_errno("cannot stat path '%s'", path);
>  	}
>  
>  	revs.disable_stdin = 1;