[BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Ramkumar Ramachandra]

Hi,

So this should explain the problem:

  # using v1.8.3.1
  $ git clone https://google.com
  Cloning into 'google.com'...
  fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found

  # using master
  $ git clone https://google.com
  Cloning into 'google.com'...
  fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
  fatal: Reading from helper 'git-remote-https' failed

To figure out where the regression was coming from, I ran a bisect
with this script:

  #!/bin/sh
  make clean &&
  make -j 8 &&
  cd t &&
  sh -v -i clone-message.sh

where clone-message.sh is:

  test_description=clone-message

  . ./test-lib.sh

  test_expect_success setup '

  	rm -fr .git &&
  	test_create_repo src &&
  	(
  		cd src &&
  		>file &&
  		git add file &&
  		git commit -m initial &&
  		echo 1 >file &&
  		git add file &&
  		git commit -m updated
  	)

  '

  test_expect_success 'clone invalid URL' '
  	rm -fr dst &&
  	test_must_fail git clone https://google.com 2>msg &&
  	test_i18ngrep "repository .* not found" msg &&
  	! test_i18ngrep "git-remote-https" msg
  '

  test_done

The bisect pointed me to: 81d340d4 (transport-helper: report errors
properly, 2013-04-10).

  $ git clone https://google.com
  Cloning into 'google.com'...
  fatal: https://google.com/info/refs?service=git-upload-pack not
found: did you run git update-server-info on the server?
  fatal: Reading from remote helper failed

What?!  Okay, the last "Reading from remote helper failed" was
introduced by this commit; my clone-message.sh has a bug.  So I
commented out the first test_i18ngrep and ran it.  Result: c096955
(transport-helper: mention helper name when it dies, 2013-04-10).
This is not the real culprit: it just changed the message string that
81d340d4 originally introduced.

Okay, so am I reporting a valid bug?  Going through remote-curl, I can
see that it dies in remote-curl.c:213 if HTTP_TARGET_MISSING.  If that
is the case, what is the point of printing the second message about
the remote helper program not being present?

Thanks.

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Jeff King]

On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 06:46:55PM +0530, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:

> So this should explain the problem:
> 
>   # using v1.8.3.1
>   $ git clone https://google.com
>   Cloning into 'google.com'...
>   fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
> 
>   # using master
>   $ git clone https://google.com
>   Cloning into 'google.com'...
>   fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
>   fatal: Reading from helper 'git-remote-https' failed
>
> [...]
> The bisect pointed me to: 81d340d4 (transport-helper: report errors
> properly, 2013-04-10).

Yeah, that is a not-so-great fallout from 81d340d4. The point of that
commit was that we do not know whether the remote helper has printed
anything useful; it died unexpectedly while we tried to read from it.

In this case, of course it has, and so the extra message is redundant
and unwanted.

I'm not sure if there is a good way to distinguish the two cases
(snooping on stderr would add complexity, and is not even robust, as we
do not know the meaning of human-readable messages coming over stderr).
Waiting for an "expected" time for the helper give us EOF does not work
either; I think in this case we asked for a "list" or "fetch", and the
helper died without giving us an answer (because there is no answer to
give; there is no "oops, I could not complete your request" on the
fetch side of the transport helper protocol).

So I'm not sure if there is a better option than reverting 81d340d4 and
living with the lesser of two evils (no good message when the helper
dies silently).

-Peff

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Ramkumar Ramachandra]

Jeff King wrote:
> So I'm not sure if there is a better option than reverting 81d340d4 and
> living with the lesser of two evils (no good message when the helper
> dies silently).

I dug around, but I still can't justify that there is no better
option.  Could you write a commit message for this?

-- 8< --
diff --git a/transport-helper.c b/transport-helper.c
index 06c08a1..db9bd18 100644
--- a/transport-helper.c
+++ b/transport-helper.c
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ static int recvline_fh(FILE *helper, struct strbuf
 	if (strbuf_getline(buffer, helper, '\n') == EOF) {
 		if (debug)
 			fprintf(stderr, "Debug: Remote helper quit.\n");
-		die("Reading from helper 'git-remote-%s' failed", name);
+		exit(128);
 	}

 	if (debug)

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Ramkumar Ramachandra]

Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:
> diff --git a/transport-helper.c b/transport-helper.c
> index 06c08a1..db9bd18 100644
> --- a/transport-helper.c
> +++ b/transport-helper.c

Oh, and we have to remove test 23 - "proper failure checks for
pushing" from t5801-remote-helpers.sh.

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Jeff King]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 12:14:33PM +0530, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:

> Jeff King wrote:
> > So I'm not sure if there is a better option than reverting 81d340d4 and
> > living with the lesser of two evils (no good message when the helper
> > dies silently).
> 
> I dug around, but I still can't justify that there is no better
> option.  Could you write a commit message for this?

I think it is something like this:

-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] transport-helper: be quiet on read errors from helpers

Prior to commit 81d340d4, we did not print any error message
if a remote transport helper died unexpectedly. If a helper
did not print any error message (e.g., because it crashed),
the user could be left confused. That commit tried to
rectify the situation by printing a note that the helper
exited unexpectedly.

However, this makes a much more common case worse: when a
helper does die with a useful message, we print the extra
"Reading from 'git-remote-foo failed" message. This can also
end up confusing users, as they may not even know what
remote helpers are (e.g., the fact that http support comes
through git-remote-https is purely an implementation detail
that most users do not know or care about).

Since we do not have a good way of knowing whether the
helper printed a useful error, and since the common failure
mode is for it to do so, let's default to remaining quiet.
Debuggers can dig further by setting GIT_TRANSPORT_HELPER_DEBUG.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
Note that I haven't thought too hard about this; there may be a way to
detect for specific operations that we were expecting more data from the
helper and didn't get it. But even if we do want to go that route, I
think reverting the change to recvline_fh is probably going to be the
first step.

 t/t5801-remote-helpers.sh | 4 +---
 transport-helper.c        | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/t/t5801-remote-helpers.sh b/t/t5801-remote-helpers.sh
index 4899af3..8c4c539 100755
--- a/t/t5801-remote-helpers.sh
+++ b/t/t5801-remote-helpers.sh
@@ -210,9 +210,7 @@ test_expect_success 'proper failure checks for pushing' '
 	(GIT_REMOTE_TESTGIT_FAILURE=1 &&
 	export GIT_REMOTE_TESTGIT_FAILURE &&
 	cd local &&
-	test_must_fail git push --all 2> error &&
-	cat error &&
-	grep -q "Reading from helper .git-remote-testgit. failed" error
+	test_must_fail git push --all
 	)
 '
 
diff --git a/transport-helper.c b/transport-helper.c
index 06c08a1..db9bd18 100644
--- a/transport-helper.c
+++ b/transport-helper.c
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ static int recvline_fh(FILE *helper, struct strbuf *buffer, const char *name)
 	if (strbuf_getline(buffer, helper, '\n') == EOF) {
 		if (debug)
 			fprintf(stderr, "Debug: Remote helper quit.\n");
-		die("Reading from helper 'git-remote-%s' failed", name);
+		exit(128);
 	}
 
 	if (debug)
-- 
1.8.3.rc2.14.g7eee6b3

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[John Szakmeister]

On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Ramkumar Ramachandra
<artagnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> So this should explain the problem:
>
>   # using v1.8.3.1
>   $ git clone https://google.com
>   Cloning into 'google.com'...
>   fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
>
>   # using master
>   $ git clone https://google.com
>   Cloning into 'google.com'...
>   fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
>   fatal: Reading from helper 'git-remote-https' failed

I can see where this is confusing, but can also see how it's useful
information to have.  On clone, it's probably not that useful since
you're looking right at the url, but I could see that information
being more useful on a pull or push with the default arguments (when
the source and destination aren't quite as obvious).

-John

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> Note that I haven't thought too hard about this; there may be a way to
> detect for specific operations that we were expecting more data from the
> helper and didn't get it. But even if we do want to go that route, I
> think reverting the change to recvline_fh is probably going to be the
> first step.

Yeah, I agree with that assessment.  Will queue.

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[Junio C Hamano]

John Szakmeister <john@szakmeister.net> writes:

> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Ramkumar Ramachandra
> <artagnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> So this should explain the problem:
>>
>>   # using v1.8.3.1
>>   $ git clone https://google.com
>>   Cloning into 'google.com'...
>>   fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
>>
>>   # using master
>>   $ git clone https://google.com
>>   Cloning into 'google.com'...
>>   fatal: repository 'https://google.com/' not found
>>   fatal: Reading from helper 'git-remote-https' failed
>
> I can see where this is confusing, but can also see how it's useful
> information to have.  On clone, it's probably not that useful since
> you're looking right at the url, but I could see that information
> being more useful on a pull or push with the default arguments (when
> the source and destination aren't quite as obvious).

The "extra" error messages is not the first one, but the last one,
and the suggested revert is a proposal to remove the latter, not the
"repository $URL not found".

Re: [BUG] clone: regression in error messages in master

[John Szakmeister]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> John Szakmeister <john@szakmeister.net> writes:
[snip]
>> I can see where this is confusing, but can also see how it's useful
>> information to have.  On clone, it's probably not that useful since
>> you're looking right at the url, but I could see that information
>> being more useful on a pull or push with the default arguments (when
>> the source and destination aren't quite as obvious).
>
> The "extra" error messages is not the first one, but the last one,
> and the suggested revert is a proposal to remove the latter, not the
> "repository $URL not found".

Sorry for the confusion.  I realize they were talking about removing
the remote helper line.  What I meant was that with the url there,
it's a bit easier to determine which part of git failed (http, hg, or
bzr remote helper, for instance).  What I was trying to say was
perhaps there are paths through here where it's really helpful to know
that things failed in the remote helper, so we may not want to
wholesale remove it.  Some of remote helpers, such as ones that talk
to foreign VCSes, do quite a bit more than just transfer data, so it
might be helpful to know that it's not core git that's failing but the
remote helper.  Seeing the URL is a reminder that you're interacting
with a remote helper, and it may not be helpful there.  But other
commands don't necessarily show that to you, and it may be more
helpful to have that reminder that it was a remote helper that failed.

I hope that makes more sense.

-John