When asked to write a multi-pack-index the user can specify a preferred
pack that is used as a tie breaker when multiple packs contain the same
objects. When this packfile cannot be found, we just pick the first pack
that is getting tracked by the newly written multi-pack-index as a
fallback.

Picking the fallback can fail in the case where we're asked to write a
multi-pack-index with no packfiles at all: picking the fallback value
will cause a segfault as we blindly index into the array of packfiles,
which would be empty.

Fix this bug by resetting the preferred packfile index to `-1` before
searching for the preferred pack. This fixes the segfault as we already
check for whether the index is `> - 1`. If it is not, we simply don't
pick a preferred packfile at all.

Helped-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
---
 midx.c                      |  6 +++---
 t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh | 12 ++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/midx.c b/midx.c
index 47989f7ea7..67eb617591 100644
--- a/midx.c
+++ b/midx.c
@@ -1328,17 +1328,17 @@ static int write_midx_internal(const char *object_dir,
 	}
 
 	if (preferred_pack_name) {
-		int found = 0;
+		ctx.preferred_pack_idx = -1;
+
 		for (i = 0; i < ctx.nr; i++) {
 			if (!cmp_idx_or_pack_name(preferred_pack_name,
 						  ctx.info[i].pack_name)) {
 				ctx.preferred_pack_idx = i;
-				found = 1;
 				break;
 			}
 		}
 
-		if (!found)
+		if (ctx.preferred_pack_idx == -1)
 			warning(_("unknown preferred pack: '%s'"),
 				preferred_pack_name);
 	} else if (ctx.nr &&
diff --git a/t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh b/t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh
index 499d5d4c78..0883c7c6bd 100755
--- a/t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh
+++ b/t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh
@@ -183,6 +183,18 @@ test_expect_success 'write midx with --stdin-packs' '
 
 compare_results_with_midx "mixed mode (one pack + extra)"
 
+test_expect_success 'write with no objects and preferred pack' '
+	test_when_finished "rm -rf empty" &&
+	git init empty &&
+	test_must_fail git -C empty multi-pack-index write \
+		--stdin-packs --preferred-pack=does-not-exist </dev/null 2>err &&
+	cat >expect <<-EOF &&
+	warning: unknown preferred pack: ${SQ}does-not-exist${SQ}
+	error: no pack files to index.
+	EOF
+	test_cmp expect err
+'
+
 test_expect_success 'write progress off for redirected stderr' '
 	git multi-pack-index --object-dir=$objdir write 2>err &&
 	test_line_count = 0 err
-- 
2.40.0