I found a few issues with parsing in fast-import (dating back to git-2.6.0). I was thrown off track for a while by the fact that the .git/fast_import_crash_$PID file erroneously claimed that the penultimate command it read was somehow truncated; e.g. for input of the form: commit refs/heads/master mark :1 author Full Name <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 1000000000 +0100 committer Full Name <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 1000000000 +0100 data 53 Commit message for intentionally empty orphan commit get-mark :1 the crash file was reporting Most Recent Commands Before Crash --------------------------------- commit refs/heads/master mark :1 author Full Name <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 1000000000 +0100 committer Full Name <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 1000000000 +0100 data 53 * get-mark :1 In other words, it dropped the commit message line entirely, which made me wonder if I was having weird buffering or flushing issues until I was able to narrow it down to the simple testcase above and could duplicate with cat seven-line-test-file | git fast-import I don't know if there are other ways to get fast-import to give a corrupted "Most Recent Commands Before Crash" report, but this one doesn't trigger after my other fixes below. Switching gears from the bad reporting to the original parsing bug though, it is clear fast-import somehow mishandled get-mark directives after empty orphan commits. Digging into it, I think it was caused by following a precedent set by a somewhat unsafe implementation of trying to allow cat-blob directives to appear in the middle of a commit. My spelunking showed the following commits seemed to be the most relevant as to how we got to the current state: 777f80d7429b ("fast-import: Allow cat-blob requests at arbitrary points in stream", 2010-11-28) 8dc6a373d201 ("fast-import: add 'ls' command", 2010-12-02) 97313bef2a16 ("fast-import: use skip_prefix for parsing input", 2014-06-18) 28c7b1f7b7b7 ("fast-import: add a get-mark command", 2015-07-01) I've cc'ed the relevant folks, and have a few patches that fix the issue and I think make the parser more robust against future issues in a way that I think is safe enough for backward compatibility, but "backward compatible enough" might concern some folks; if so, please take a look at patches 4 and 5. Elijah Newren (5): t9300: demonstrate bug with get-mark and empty orphan commits git-fast-import.txt: fix wording about where ls command can appear fast-import: check most prominent commands first fast-import: only allow cat-blob requests where it makes sense fast-import: fix erroneous handling of get-mark with empty orphan commits Documentation/git-fast-import.txt | 22 +++++++++--------- fast-import.c | 31 ++++++++++++++------------ t/t9300-fast-import.sh | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 3 files changed, 66 insertions(+), 24 deletions(-) -- 2.21.0.rc2.5.g8f70af2367