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feat(core): report a clear error when the configured branch doesn't exist

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
Half a day
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
github, shell
Domain
cli

Research direction

The branch is read from githubbranch or LGSM_GITHUBBRANCH, and bootstrap and update-lgsm are the places the check would run; the payload names no specific files, so locate the download helpers by searching for the GitHub fallback logic. Done means one branch-existence check per run that fails with the requested message on a 404 only, while timeouts, 429 and 5xx keep the existing fallback. Confirm the design with maintainers before writing code, since the issue reads as a proposal rather than a settled fix.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

type: feature

Problem

If the configured branch (githubbranch, or LGSM_GITHUBBRANCH) doesn't exist on githubuser/githubrepo, for example after a typo or once a feature branch has been deleted after merging, LinuxGSM's module downloads fail with generic download errors. The real cause isn't reported.

Proposal

Check once, during bootstrap and in update-lgsm, that the branch exists, and fail with a clear message if it doesn't:

Branch "<branch>" not found on <githubuser>/<githubrepo>
  • Check once per run, not on every file download.
  • Use a connect timeout, like the existing repo selection (--connect-timeout 3).
  • Treat only a 404 as "branch missing". Other errors (timeouts, 429, 5xx) should keep the current GitHub/Bitbucket fallback.
  • Fail clearly rather than silently switching to master, so nobody ends up on code they didn't choose.

Replaces the draft #4170 (closed): it had bugs, including a sed -i ...;q in update-lgsm that would have cut the game server script down to one line, and it was 486 commits behind develop.

Dominant language
Shell
Stars
4.9k
Forks
870
Avg merge
1d 16h
Merged PRs (30d)
45

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