Bug: an invalid branch name does not produce a failure

[elliot-nelson]

SUMMARY

If I run pretty-quick with the --branch option and specify a branch that does not exist, I expect the tool to print out an appropriate error message and exit with exit code 1.

Instead, the tool "runs" without finding any issues:

❯ npx pretty-quick --branch asdf              
🔍  Finding changed files since git revision null.
🎯  Found 0 changed files.
✅  Everything is awesome!

This bug can cause lingering issues because a configuration problem (like passing in the wrong environment variable) can go a long time without being detected.

[kytta]

This issue still persists after 3+ years. In my case, the problem was even more sneaky: The branch I tried to check against actually exists on the remote, but CI didn't fetch it (so it didn't exist locally for the CI). So the script silently passed in the CI, but not locally (where it never ran). Apart from that, it doesn't even say "null" anymore; my output says Finding changed files since git revision .

I guess throwing an error would be a breaking change :/