read_gitfile(): simplify NOT_A_REPO error message

If a .git file is well-formed but points to a directory that is not itself a valid repository, then we say: fatal: not a git repository: <pointed-to-repo> without mentioning the .git file that pointed us there in the first place. Doing so could better help the user understand the source of the problem. In theory the most helpful thing we could do is mention both paths, like: gitfile '<gitfile>' points to invalid repository: <pointed-to-repo> But there's another catch: when we generate the error, we don't always know the pointed-to repository! This leads to a potential segfault. The message comes from read_gitfile_error_die(). Originally we only called that function from inside read_gitfile_gently(), passing in both the gitfile path and the pointed-to path. But that changed in 1dd27bfbfd (setup: improve error diagnosis for invalid .git files, 2026-03-04). Since then, the caller in setup_git_directory_gently(), even if it wants to die on error, always passes in the "return_error_code" flag, asking the function to instead return a numeric error code. And then it calls read_gitfile_error_die() itself, passing NULL for the pointed-to path. If we get the READ_GITFILE_ERR_NOT_A_REPO code, we form a message using that NULL pointer, and either segfault or get garbage like "not a git repository: (null)", depending on the platform. We could fix this by having the function pass out both the numeric error code and the pointed-to path. But that creates a new headache: we have to allocate that string on the heap and pass ownership back to the caller. So now every caller has to be aware of it (and either free the result, or signal that they are not interested by using an extra parameter). Instead, let's just drop the pointed-to path from the error message entirely, and mention only the gitfile. This fixes the NULL dereference without introducing any more complexity. The user-facing error message is not as detailed as it could be, but is better than the original. Since it mentions the gitfile, a user investigating the situation can look there to find the pointed-to path (whereas you could not go the other way from the original message). There's an existing test in t0002 which triggers this case, but we didn't notice the problem because it checks only that we said "not a repository", and not the full string. So if we print "(null)" it is happy. It will probably crash on some non-glibc platforms, but nobody seems to have reported it yet (the breakage is recent-ish as of v2.54). I'm also somewhat surprised that building with ASan/UBSan doesn't catch this, but it doesn't seem to (and I found an open issue with somebody asking for NULL printf checks to be implemented in the sanitizers). We'll tweak the test to match the new error, but there's no need to beef it up further, since we're not showing the pointed-to path at all. We also racily trigger this in t7450. During parallel cloning we might see one of several errors, including this one. And so we must update that message, too (you can otherwise find the failure pretty quickly by running t7450 with --stress). Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Jeff King committed Jun 16, 2026 at 08:35 UTC 54a441bcea885c13c7a8a80bc3bbcfb1ace9f8a9
5 files changed +9 -8
setup.c
+5 -4
@@ -917,7 +917,7 @@ int verify_repository_format(const struct repository_format *format,
917 return 0;
918 }
919
920 -void read_gitfile_error_die(int error_code, const char *path, const char *dir)
920 +void read_gitfile_error_die(int error_code, const char *path)
921 {
922 switch (error_code) {
923 case READ_GITFILE_ERR_NOT_A_FILE:
@@ -937,7 +937,8 @@ void read_gitfile_error_die(int error_code, const char *path, const char *dir)
937 case READ_GITFILE_ERR_NO_PATH:
938 die(_("no path in gitfile: %s"), path);
939 case READ_GITFILE_ERR_NOT_A_REPO:
940 - die(_("not a git repository: %s"), dir);
940 + die(_("gitfile does not point to a valid repository: %s"),
941 + path);
942 default:
943 BUG("unknown error code");
944 }
@@ -1028,7 +1029,7 @@ cleanup_return:
1029 if (return_error_code)
1030 *return_error_code = error_code;
1031 else if (error_code)
1031 - read_gitfile_error_die(error_code, path, dir);
1032 + read_gitfile_error_die(error_code, path);
1033
1034 free(buf);
1035 return error_code ? NULL : path;
@@ -1633,7 +1634,7 @@ static enum discovery_result setup_git_directory_gently_1(struct strbuf *dir,
1634 return GIT_DIR_INVALID_GITFILE;
1635 default:
1636 if (die_on_error)
1636 - read_gitfile_error_die(error_code, dir->buf, NULL);
1637 + read_gitfile_error_die(error_code, dir->buf);
1638 else
1639 return GIT_DIR_INVALID_GITFILE;
1640 }
setup.h
+1 -1
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ int is_nonbare_repository_dir(struct strbuf *path);
38 #define READ_GITFILE_ERR_TOO_LARGE 8
39 #define READ_GITFILE_ERR_MISSING 9
40 #define READ_GITFILE_ERR_IS_A_DIR 10
41 -void read_gitfile_error_die(int error_code, const char *path, const char *dir);
41 +void read_gitfile_error_die(int error_code, const char *path);
42 const char *read_gitfile_gently(const char *path, int *return_error_code);
43 #define read_gitfile(path) read_gitfile_gently((path), NULL)
44 const char *resolve_gitdir_gently(const char *suspect, int *return_error_code);
submodule.c
+1 -1
@@ -2578,7 +2578,7 @@ void absorb_git_dir_into_superproject(const char *path,
2578
2579 if (err_code != READ_GITFILE_ERR_NOT_A_REPO)
2580 /* We don't know what broke here. */
2581 - read_gitfile_error_die(err_code, path, NULL);
2581 + read_gitfile_error_die(err_code, path);
2582
2583 /*
2584 * Maybe populated, but no git directory was found?
t/t0002-gitfile.sh
+1 -1
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ test_expect_success 'bad setup: invalid .git file format' '
27 test_expect_success 'bad setup: invalid .git file path' '
28 echo "gitdir: $REAL.not" >.git &&
29 test_must_fail git rev-parse 2>.err &&
30 - test_grep "not a git repository" .err
30 + test_grep "gitfile does not point to a valid repository" .err
31 '
32
33 test_expect_success 'final setup + check rev-parse --git-dir' '
t/t7450-bad-git-dotfiles.sh
+1 -1
@@ -348,7 +348,7 @@ test_expect_success 'git dirs of sibling submodules must not be nested' '
348 test_expect_success 'submodule git dir nesting detection must work with parallel cloning' '
349 test_must_fail git clone --recurse-submodules --jobs=2 nested clone_parallel 2>err &&
350 cat err &&
351 - grep -E "(already exists|is inside git dir|not a git repository)" err &&
351 + grep -E "(already exists|is inside git dir|does not point to a valid repository)" err &&
352 {
353 test_path_is_missing .git/modules/hippo/HEAD ||
354 test_path_is_missing .git/modules/hippo/hooks/HEAD