zed-industries/zed · error

git blame process failed: {stderr}

Error message

git blame process failed: {stderr}

What it means

After driving git blame to completion (stdin written, stdout/stderr drained, status awaited), a non-zero exit whose stderr is neither the sentinel for an unborn HEAD ("fatal: no such ref" family) nor a missing-path error bails with the raw stderr. The two sentinels are deliberately downgraded to Ok(Vec::new()) — everything else is treated as a real failure.

Source

Thrown at crates/git/src/blame.rs:189

        Result::<String>::Ok(stderr_output)
    };

    let wait_for_status = async {
        child
            .status()
            .await
            .context("waiting for git blame process")
    };

    let ((), entries, stderr, status) =
        try_join!(write_stdin, read_stdout, read_stderr, wait_for_status)?;

    if !status.success() {
        let trimmed = stderr.trim();
        if trimmed == GIT_BLAME_NO_COMMIT_ERROR || trimmed.contains(GIT_BLAME_NO_PATH) {
            return Ok(Vec::new());
        }
        anyhow::bail!("git blame process failed: {stderr}");
    }

    Ok(entries)
}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
pub struct BlameEntry {
    pub sha: Oid,

    pub range: Range<u32>,

    pub original_line_number: u32,

    pub author: Option<String>,
    pub author_mail: Option<String>,
    pub author_time: Option<i64>,
    pub author_tz: Option<String>,

View on GitHub (pinned to f4178619ac)

Solutions

1. Reproduce manually: run the same `git blame ... <path>` in the worktree and read stderr
2. Run `git fsck` and `git status` to rule out a corrupted object database or index
3. If the target is a submodule/gitlink, exclude it from blame requests
4. Update/downgrade git to a version whose behavior matches the parser, or extend the sentinel handling upstream

match repo.blame(&path, client).await {
    Ok(entries) => Ok(entries),
    Err(e) if e.to_string().contains("git blame process failed") => { /* surface stderr, skip blame UI */ }
    Err(e) => Err(e),
}

When it happens

Trigger: Repository::blame running `git blame` where git fails for reasons other than empty HEAD/missing path: corrupt object database, blaming a gitlink/submodule path, a pathspec that needs disambiguation, or a git version emitting unexpected output/errors.

Common situations: Repos with gc/prune corruption, blame invoked on a submodule mount point, older/newer git with changed fatal messages that miss the sentinel match, or worktrees with stale indexes.

Understand the failure class

Background: "git command failed": what it means when a tool shells out to git and git exits non-zero — this error's family across 21 libraries.

Related errors

• git status failed: {stderr}
• git diff-tree failed: {stderr}
• git merge-base failed: {stderr}
• git worktree list failed: {stderr}
• git worktree add failed: {stderr}

AI-assisted analysis of zed-industries/zed@f4178619ac (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2884cdf38023c8d8. Report an issue: GitHub.