Re: Confusing git pull error message

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 01:32:34PM +0200, Johannes Sixt wrote:

> Unfortunately, this is not water-tight. See what I just observed:
> 
>   $ git pull hk
>   From /exports/repos/hk/viscovery
>      9455552..6429037  master     -> hk/master
>   Your configuration specifies to merge the ref
>   'master' from the remote, but no such ref
>   was fetched.
> 
> The message is confusing when it says "'master' was not fetched" when
> clearly master _was_ fetched.
> 
> More importantly, the message is wrong to say that "Your configuration
> specifies to merge the ref 'master' from the remote", because I have this
> configuration:

Ah, yeah. Looking at %(upstream) from for-each-ref (which is how we
determine to show that message) always uses the configured remote. But
if we have asked for another remote, then that doesn't make much sense.

So I think we need something like this. I wasn't able to figure out a
test case to trigger the first code path below, though. It may not be
possible; if we give a refspec on the command line, either it will be a
candidate for merging or, if it does not exist, fetch will barf. So it
may be that we can just collapse it down to a single case.

diff --git a/git-pull.sh b/git-pull.sh
index edf3ce3..a831db5 100755
--- a/git-pull.sh
+++ b/git-pull.sh
@@ -97,6 +97,18 @@ error_on_no_merge_candidates () {
 		echo "Please specify which branch you want to merge on the command"
 		echo "line and try again (e.g. 'git pull <repository> <refspec>')."
 		echo "See git-pull(1) for details."
+	elif [ -n "$1" ]; then
+		if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
+			echo "You asked to pull from the remote '$1', but none"
+			echo "of the things you asked to fetch were candidates"
+			echo "for merging."
+		else
+			echo "You asked to pull from the remote '$1', but did"
+			echo "not specify a branch to merge. Because this is"
+			echo "not the default configured remote for your current"
+			echo "branch, you must specify a branch on the command"
+			echo "line."
+		fi
 	elif [ -z "$upstream" ]; then
 		echo "You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you"
 		echo "want to merge with, and 'branch.${curr_branch}.merge' in"