fix(but): improve error message when branch collides by path prefix#14153
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Pull request overview
Improves the but branch new UX when a requested branch name collides with an existing branch due to a path-prefix conflict (e.g. A exists and user attempts to create A/new), turning a previously obtuse low-level error into a clear, user-facing message and adding regression coverage.
Changes:
- Detect
NotADirectoryfromgixreference lookup and convert it into a targeted “collides with existing branch” error. - Add a helper to identify the colliding prefix branch for display purposes.
- Add a CLI test asserting the improved error message for path-prefix collisions.
Reviewed changes
Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| crates/but/src/args/atoms/branch_arg.rs | Adds NotADirectory handling for prefix collisions and computes a display name for the colliding prefix branch. |
| crates/but/tests/but/command/branch/new.rs | Adds a regression test verifying the new collision error message. |
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If a branch exists at `<path>`, and you create a new branch `<path>/name`, then that collides with the existing branch at `<path>` due to the need to now create a directory at `<path>`. The error message generated in that situation used to be very obtuse, and this commit improves upon it to be more clear.
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Thanks for the ping! Indeed, this issue should be fixed in |
This was referenced Jun 15, 2026
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Byron
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This is also the bases for reverting most of gitbutlerapp#14153
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The fix now comes from `gix`. It's clearly a worse error message as it's not tuned in any way, which makes me wish the `gix-error` crate was already used everywhere which would have made that easy.
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The fix now comes from `gix`. To keep the error message, additional work is needed, but it's also working on Windows. In future, `gix` should provide such an error message, it already saw the conflicting ref and thus could avoid duplicate work (and reduce complexity here).
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If a branch exists at
<path>, and you create a new branch<path>/name, then that collides with the existing branch at<path>due to the need to now create a directory at<path>. The error message generated in that situation used to be very obtuse, and this commit improves upon it to be more clear.There is an underlying issue in
gixwhere if you dorepo.try_find_reference("<path>/name")in that same situation, an error is returned with aNotADirectorykind. This is explicitly asserted inside gix so need to sync with @Byron if this should be changed ingixor if we just work around it here.We want this nice error message regardless so the code here will probably change minimally regardless.