[Monotone-devel] "" is invalid file_path?

[Stephen Leake]

As part of the conflict resolution work, I need to parse the output of
'automate show_conflicts'.

For a missing root, a typical output is:

     conflict missing_root
    left_type "pivoted root"
ancestor_name "foo"
   right_type "deleted directory"
ancestor_name "foo"

     conflict orphaned_directory
   right_type "deleted directory"
ancestor_name ""
    left_type "renamed directory"
ancestor_name ""
    left_name "bar"


The 'ancestor_name' lines in the second stanza are the names of the
root directories in the left and right parent revisions. I'm not clear
that they can ever be other than ""; more on that later.

Part of parsing this requires turning the file name string into a
file_path object. However, the file_path_as_external constructor
complains that "" is an invalid path. This is from this line in
normalize_external_path:

      N(!path.empty(), F("empty path '%s' is invalid") % path);

However, fully_normalized_path has this:

  // empty path is fine
  if (path.empty())
    return true;

What is the rationale for normalize_external_path rejecting ""?

One fix is to delete that line from normalize_external_path.

If the ancestor_name line can never be other than "", another fix is
to delete those lines from the show_conflicts output; they are not
useful. But then "" may show up elsewhere, so I prefer the first fix.

-- 
-- Stephe