Re: What is 'git BRANCH'?

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

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Jurko Gospodnetić <jurko.gospodnetic@docte.hr> writes:
>
>>   Hi.
>>
>>   I typed in "git BRANCH" by accident and got the error message:
>> "fatal: cannot handle BRANCH internally".
>>
>>   What does that mean?
>>
>>   It is different from the usual "git: 'yada-yada' is not a
>> git-command. See 'git --help'." message you get when you type in an
>> incorrect command name.
>
> Just a guess; your git is installed on a case-challenged filesystem?

Yeah, that must be it.  This can happen on MacOS and Windows, I would
imagine.

-- >8 --
[PATCH] Fail on unknown command sensibly on case-challenged filesystems

The callchain on a case-challenged filesystem when the user runs "git
BRANCH" looks like this:

  - main(): git BRANCH
   - execv_dashed_external("BRANCH")
    - execvp("git-BRANCH")

     - main(): git-BRANCH
      - prefixcmp("git-BRANCH", "git-")
       - handle_internal_command()
         struct cmd_struct commands[] does not have "BRANCH"
         so it returns, instead of exiting.

When the "git wrapper" execs "git-BRANCH", if your filesystem knows
"branch" and "BRANCH" are different, execvp() would fail and we will see
the familiar error message from the git.c::main().

However, if execvp() succeeds, we feed an unknown command name to
handle_internal_command() and it triggers a different error message.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
---
 git.c |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/git.c b/git.c
index 37b1d76..c99e769 100644
--- a/git.c
+++ b/git.c
@@ -448,7 +448,7 @@ int main(int argc, const char **argv)
 		cmd += 4;
 		argv[0] = cmd;
 		handle_internal_command(argc, argv);
-		die("cannot handle %s internally", cmd);
+		help_unknown_cmd(cmd);
 	}
 
 	/* Look for flags.. */