hound-search/hound

Handle empty git repositories gracefully

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#228 opened on Nov 28, 2016

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enhancementhelp wanted

Description

I'm indexing several hundred repos, and a few of them are currently empty. This causes an error in hound's logs:

2016/11/28 18:08:09 Failed to git fetch /users/foo/hound/data/vcs-ce7a7ad7a7faafc79f1aaaf7df43a2f9da56539, see output below
fatal: Couldn't find remote ref master
Continuing...
2016/11/28 18:08:09 exit status 128

If I cd to the relevant directory:

$ git log
fatal: your current branch 'master' does not have any commits yet

Contributor guide

Tech stack
go
Domain
developer experiencetooling
Issue type
bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
basic Go knowledgeunderstanding of git
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
40
Research direction
Investigate how hound handles git operations, likely in the 'git' package or similar. Look for where 'git fetch' is called and handle the case where the repository is empty (no commits). The error occurs when trying to fetch remote ref 'master' which doesn't exist. Modify the code to check if the repository is empty before fetching, or handle the error gracefully.