When rebasing interactively (rebase -i), "git branch --list" prints a line indicating the current branch being rebased. This works well when the interactive rebase is initiated when a local branch is checked out. This doesn't play well when the rebase is initiated on a detached HEAD. When "git branch --list" tries to print information related to the interactive rebase in this case it tries to print the name of a branch using an uninitialized variable and thus tries to print a "null pointer string". As a consequence, it does not provide useful information while also inducing undefined behaviour. So, print the point from which the rebase was started when interactive rebasing a detached HEAD. Signed-off-by: Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@xxxxxxxxx> --- ref-filter.c | 12 ++++++++---- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/ref-filter.c b/ref-filter.c index f9e25aea7..db2baedfe 100644 --- a/ref-filter.c +++ b/ref-filter.c @@ -1309,10 +1309,14 @@ char *get_head_description(void) memset(&state, 0, sizeof(state)); wt_status_get_state(&state, 1); if (state.rebase_in_progress || - state.rebase_interactive_in_progress) - strbuf_addf(&desc, _("(no branch, rebasing %s)"), - state.branch); - else if (state.bisect_in_progress) + state.rebase_interactive_in_progress) { + if (state.branch) + strbuf_addf(&desc, _("(no branch, rebasing %s)"), + state.branch); + else + strbuf_addf(&desc, _("(no branch, rebasing detached HEAD %s)"), + state.detached_from); + } else if (state.bisect_in_progress) strbuf_addf(&desc, _("(no branch, bisect started on %s)"), state.branch); else if (state.detached_from) { -- 2.17.0.rc0.231.g781580f06