git bundle verify crash

Question

I try to restore a gitlab backup manually (not back to a gitlab instance). My problem is as follow.
I extract the .bundle file of the project and try

git bundle verfiy myproject.bundle

but it always crash. I tried it on mac os x (git 2.16) and on windows (git 2.16.1) and both crash. This happen will all repos from the backup.

The exact message from mac os x git is

BUG: environment.c:181: git environment hasn't been setup Abort trap: 6

Backup was created with git 2.14

Does anybody know what i can do now?

Greetings

Answer 1

From the message I can assume it tries to get the current repository and there is none.

If your bundle is full, not incremental, you can try to initialize an empty repository and run your command from it.

If it is incremental, then probably verifying should be run in a repository which has the earlier history

Answer 2

If make a empty git repo with git init and start the verify, now it works.
That's strange, because it would be easy to display a good error message instead of a crash.

That is very true, and what Git 2.22.1 (Q2 2019) is doing:

See commit 3bbbe46 (27 May 2019) by Johannes Schindelin (dscho).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit abbd504, 25 Jul 2019)}

bundle verify: error out if called without an object database

The deal with bundles is: they really are thin packs, with very little sugar on top. So we really need a repository (or more appropriately, an object database) to work with, when asked to verify a bundle.

Let's error out with a useful error message if git bundle verify is called without such an object database to work with.

Reported by Konstantin Ryabitsev.

That means git/git bundle.c#verify_bundle() function now includes:

if (!r || !r->objects || !r->objects->odb)
    return error(_("need a repository to verify a bundle"));

---

With Git 2.34 (Q4 2021), the "thin packs" part is clarified:

See commit 1d9c8da, commit 0bb92f3, commit 9ab80dd, commit 5c8273d (31 Jul 2021) by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (avar).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit f19b275, 24 Aug 2021)}

bundle doc: rewrite the "DESCRIPTION" section

^{Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason}

Rewrite the "DESCRIPTION" section for "git bundle"^(man) to start by talking about what bundles are in general terms, rather than diving directly into one example of what they might be used for.

This changes documentation that's been substantially the same ever since the command was added in 2e0afaf ("Add git-bundle: move objects and references by archive", 2007-02-22, Git v1.5.1-rc1 -- merge).

There was a discussion about whether to say anything at all about "thin packs" here.
I think it's good to mention it for the curious reader willing to read the technical docs, but let's explicitly say that there's no "thick pack", and that the difference shouldn't matter.

git bundle now includes in its man page:

Create, unpack, and manipulate "bundle" files. Bundles are used for the "offline" transfer of Git objects without an active "server" sitting on the other side of the network connection.

They can be used to create both incremental and full backups of a repository, and to relay the state of the references in one repository to another.

Git commands that fetch or otherwise "read" via protocols such as ssh:// and https:// can also operate on bundle files. It is possible git clone a new repository from a bundle, to use git fetch to fetch from one, and to list the references contained within it with git ls-remote. There's no corresponding "write" support, i.e.a 'git push' into a bundle is not supported.

See the "EXAMPLES" section below for examples of how to use bundles.

BUNDLE FORMAT

Bundles are .pack files (see git pack-objects) with a header indicating what references are contained within the bundle.

Like the the packed archive format itself bundles can either be self-contained, or be created using exclusions.

Bundles created using revision exclusions are "thin packs" created using the --thin option to git pack-objects, and unbundled using the --fix-thin option to git index-pack.

There is no option to create a "thick pack" when using revision exclusions, users should not be concerned about the difference. By using "thin packs" bundles created using exclusions are smaller in size. That they're "thin" under the hood is merely noted here as a curiosity, and as a reference to other documentation

See technical/bundle-format, the bundle-format documentation for more details and the discussion of "thin pack" in technical/pack-format, the pack format documentation for further details.