gastownhall/beads · error

peer name cannot be empty

Error message

peer name cannot be empty

What it means

ValidatePeerName checks that a federation peer name is safe to use as a Dolt remote name. An empty name is rejected immediately with this plain error. Peer names become remote identifiers, so they must be non-empty, unique-safe strings.

Source

Thrown at internal/storage/issueops/federation.go:19

package issueops

import (
	"context"
	"database/sql"
	"fmt"
	"regexp"
	"strings"

	"github.com/steveyegge/beads/internal/storage"
)

// validPeerNameRegex matches valid peer names (alphanumeric, hyphens, underscores).
var validPeerNameRegex = regexp.MustCompile(`^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$`)

// ValidatePeerName checks that a peer name is safe for use as a Dolt remote name.
func ValidatePeerName(name string) error {
	if name == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("peer name cannot be empty")
	}
	if len(name) > 64 {
		return fmt.Errorf("peer name too long (max 64 characters)")
	}
	if !validPeerNameRegex.MatchString(name) {
		return fmt.Errorf("peer name must start with a letter and contain only alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores")
	}
	return nil
}

// AddFederationPeerInTx upserts a federation peer record. The encryptedPwd
// should already be encrypted by the caller; pass nil for no password.
func AddFederationPeerInTx(ctx context.Context, tx *sql.Tx, peer *storage.FederationPeer, encryptedPwd []byte) error {
	if err := ValidatePeerName(peer.Name); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid peer name: %w", err)
	}

	_, err := tx.ExecContext(ctx, `

View on GitHub (pinned to 71377f2769)

Solutions

1. Provide a non-empty peer name when adding the federation peer (e.g. --peer alpha).
2. Check your config/env for the peer-name variable and set it.
3. Call ValidatePeerName in your setup code before AddFederationPeerInTx to fail with a clear message.

Example fix

// before
AddFederationPeerInTx(ctx, tx, cfg.PeerName, addr, nil) // PeerName may be ""
// after
if cfg.PeerName == "" {
	return fmt.Errorf("--peer is required for federation setup")
}
AddFederationPeerInTx(ctx, tx, cfg.PeerName, addr, nil)

if err := issueops.ValidatePeerName(name); err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("invalid peer name %q: %w", name, err)
}

func validPeerName(name string) bool {
	return name != "" && len(name) <= 64 && issueopsPeerNameRe.MatchString(name) // ^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$
}

if err := ValidatePeerName(cfg.PeerName); err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("federation config: %w", err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling ValidatePeerName or AddFederationPeerInTx with name == "" — e.g. an unset --peer flag, empty config value, or a peer record loaded from storage with a blank name.

Common situations: Config file with `peer: ""`; environment variable for the peer name not set; constructing federation setup from templated config where the placeholder was never substituted.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Missing required field" and "field is required" errors: why libraries reject payloads that omit mandatory fields — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• peer name too long (max 64 characters)
• peer name cannot be empty
• peer name too long (max 64 characters)
• peer name must start with a letter and contain only alphanum
• peer name must start with a letter and contain only alphanum

AI-assisted analysis of gastownhall/beads@71377f2769 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6dd038edff375dc4. Report an issue: GitHub.