confusing error message while applying push on a file

[Toni Ruottu]

User attempts to apply push on a file. The following happens.

$ bzr push /tmp/file
bzr: ERROR: Target directory /tmp/file already exists, but does not have a valid .bzr directory. Supply --use-existing-dir to push there anyway.

User gets confused because the error message is all about directories while he wasn't trying to do anything with any directory. Bazaar should tell the user something that the user can understand. Maybe 'Pushing to a file is not supported.' would do.

[Toni Ruottu (toni-ruottu)]

I created a new black box test that reveals the problem.
See attached patch file.

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi,

I agree that the message should be better.

I think there is difficulty in determining whether the target
is a file or directory though.

As the request to determine this will cost an extra round trip
it should occur in the error path.

Thanks,

James

[Toni Ruottu (toni-ruottu)]

I'm unassigning myself as I haven't been looking at this bug for a while. The roots of the bug were too deep for a quick patch.