Error when cloning with weird local directory

[Chris Packham <judge.packham@gmail.com>]

Hi All,

A developer at $dayjob called me over to have a look at a git error he
was getting (names changed to protect the innocent).

  $ git --version
  git version 2.5.0
  $ git clone ssh://example.com/repo.git
  Cloning into 'repo'...
  fatal: I don't handle protocol '/home/user/src/ssh'

After a bit of head scratching we found that he had a local directory
structure called 'ssh://example.com/repo.git' it wasn't a complete
repo but it had some of the things one expects to find in a .git
directory (info, objects, refs, etc). It had been there for a while
and we suspect was created by a scp gone wrong from the last time he
was dealing with repo.git.

I'm wondering if it's worth catching this kind of weirdness and
erroring out with a slightly more useful message. I'm also wondering
what would have happened if this repo was actually a full and complete
thing.

I'm not sure that there is a problem worth solving here. I can provide
an anonymized tarball of the directory structure in question if anyone
is interested. But maybe this is useful for future mailing list
searchers[1].

Thanks,
Chris
--
[1] - https://xkcd.com/979/