[RFC] improve 'bad default revision' message for empty repo

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 09:51:02PM +0000, Reece Dunn wrote:

> >  > Consider the following workflow:
> >  >
> >  >     $ mkdir foo
> >  >     $ cd foo
> >  >     $ git --bare init
> >  >
> >  >     $ git log
> >  >     fatal: bad default revision 'HEAD'
> >  >
> >  > This message is confusing for a newbie. Displaying "no commits" would
> >  > make more sense here.

What do people think of this patch? It feels a little hack-ish to make
guesses as to the reasons for a failure, but in my experience an empty
repo is the cause of this message in 99% of cases.

We could special-case it to HEAD and make a better message, perhaps, but
that feels even more hack-ish.

---
 revision.c |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/revision.c b/revision.c
index 63bf2c5..847dbc8 100644
--- a/revision.c
+++ b/revision.c
@@ -1324,7 +1324,7 @@ int setup_revisions(int argc, const char **argv, struct rev_info *revs, const ch
 		struct object *object;
 		unsigned mode;
 		if (get_sha1_with_mode(def, sha1, &mode))
-			die("bad default revision '%s'", def);
+			die("unable to resolve '%s'; do you have any commits on this branch?", def);
 		object = get_reference(revs, def, sha1, 0);
 		add_pending_object_with_mode(revs, object, def, mode);
 	}
-- 
1.5.4.3.531.ga940.dirty