phacility/phabricator · error · Exception

Unable to load revision.

Error message

Unable to load revision.

What it means

The final hop of the 'Done' flow loads the revision that owns the diff; failure throws 'Unable to load revision'. Either the diff is attached to a revision ID that no longer exists, or the revision became invisible to the acting user between the other loads and this one.

Source

Thrown at src/applications/differential/controller/DifferentialInlineCommentEditController.php:98

      ->executeOne();
    if (!$changeset) {
      throw new Exception(pht('Unable to load changeset.'));
    }

    $diff = id(new DifferentialDiffQuery())
      ->setViewer($viewer)
      ->withIDs(array($changeset->getDiffID()))
      ->executeOne();
    if (!$diff) {
      throw new Exception(pht('Unable to load diff.'));
    }

    $revision = id(new DifferentialRevisionQuery())
      ->setViewer($viewer)
      ->withIDs(array($diff->getRevisionID()))
      ->executeOne();
    if (!$revision) {
      throw new Exception(pht('Unable to load revision.'));
    }

    $viewer_phid = $viewer->getPHID();
    $is_owner = ($viewer_phid == $revision->getAuthorPHID());
    $is_author = ($viewer_phid == $inline->getAuthorPHID());
    $is_draft = ($inline->isDraft());

    if ($is_owner) {
      // You own the revision, so you can mark the comment as "Done".
    } else if ($is_author && $is_draft) {
      // You made this comment and it's still a draft, so you can mark
      // it as "Done".
    } else {
      throw new Exception(
        pht(
          'You are not the revision owner, and this is not a draft comment '.
          'you authored.'));
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to 5720a38cfe)

Solutions

  1. Repair the orphaned diff row or purge it.
  2. Check whether a view policy, not deletion, hides the revision from this specific user.
  3. Retry with an account that can see the revision to distinguish policy from data loss.
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

try {
  // perform the inline comment action
} catch (Exception $ex) {
  if (preg_match('/Unable to load revision/', $ex->getMessage())) {
    // orphaned diff or policy change: check visibility first, then data repair
  } else {
    throw $ex;
  }
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: A diff row whose revision_id points at a deleted revision; a view-policy change that hides the revision from the user mid-flow.

Common situations: Revisions deleted while their diffs remained; policy restrictions applied to a project after users had already loaded inline comment pages.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of phacility/phabricator@5720a38cfe (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/137ccd9510d9fc10. Report an issue: GitHub.