Nvm: Unable to upgrade manually according to doc

[binarykitchen]

Tried the following from your docs to upgrade nvm manually

(
  cd "$NVM_DIR"
  git fetch origin
  git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match "v[0-9]*" origin`
) && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"

but that prints me a git error:

┌─( /Users/michael-heuberger/.nvm 7ad6d98
cd "$NVM_DIR"
  git fetch origin
  git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match "v[0-9]*" origin`
) && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
CONTRIBUTING.md      LICENSE.md           README.md            alias                bin                  nvm-exec             package.json         update_test_mocks.sh
Dockerfile           Makefile             ROADMAP.md           bash_completion      install.sh           nvm.sh               test                 versions
fatal: Not a valid object name origin

[ljharb]

Hmm - what does git remote print out inside $NVM_DIR? Note that nvm must have been initially installed using git (ie, git was available when install.sh was ran) for this to work.

[binarykitchen]

$ git remote

prints just

origin

Dont remember how I installed nvm so cant answer that.

[ljharb]

What is git --version?

[binarykitchen]

2.17.0

[joshsleeper]

edit

added second system experiencing the same issues

---

Seeing the exact same behavior as @binarykitchen on my systems

system 1

• MX-Linux 17 x86_64, which is based on Debian Stable 9.4 (Stretch), fully patched
• git 2.11.0
• nvm 0.33.8

system 2

• CentOS 7 x68_64, fully patched
• git 1.8.3.1
• nvm 0.33.8

[ljharb]

And in the git repo (on all three systems described above), what does git describe origin print out?

[joshsleeper]

can't test my debian system until i'm home, but the centos system prints out the same error:

[USER@HOSTNAME .nvm]$ git describe origin
fatal: Not a valid object name origin

[binarykitchen]

same here

└─( 2 ) ❱❱❱ git describe origin
fatal: Not a valid object name origin

[ljharb]

That's very confusing. If you git fetch first and then git describe origin, the same thing happens?

[joshsleeper]

centos system, straight from the terminal

[USER@HOSTNAME .nvm]$ git status
# Not currently on any branch.
nothing to commit, working directory clean
[USER@HOSTNAME .nvm]$ git fetch
[USER@HOSTNAME .nvm]$ git describe origin
fatal: Not a valid object name origin

[ljharb]

Ok, next try :-) git fetch --unshallow before the describe?

[joshsleeper]

coming right up

[USER@HOSTNAME .nvm]$ git fetch --unshallow
remote: Counting objects: 6396, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2410/2410), done.
remote: Total 6396 (delta 4191), reused 6156 (delta 3951), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (6396/6396), 1.88 MiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (4191/4191), completed with 173 local objects.
[USER@HOSTNAME .nvm]$ git describe origin
fatal: Not a valid object name origin

[ljharb]

Well crap, i thought that might do it.

I’m still not sure what’s going on; I’ll think more on it.

[PeterDaveHello]

I guess this may be a wrong usage, man page of git-describe didn't describe any usage with "remote" name

Usage like out Makefile is correct:
https://github.com/creationix/nvm/blob/master/Makefile#L74

    @old_ver=`git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match 'v[0-9]*.[0-9]*.[0-9]*'` || { echo "Failed to determine current version." >&2; exit 1; }; old_ver=$${old_ver#v}; \

[PeterDaveHello]

@binarykitchen @joshsleeper would you like to try the revised version here? Hope it'll work for you!
https://github.com/creationix/nvm/pull/1786

[joshsleeper]

https://github.com/creationix/nvm/pull/1786#issuecomment-380867482

[joshsleeper]

Argh...

So I was _pretty_ sure #1786 fixed things, but here I am on 0.33.9 and the new upgrade script doesn't bump me to 0.33.11 (latest at time of writing)
So maybe it's not quite resolved?

[ljharb]

You might need a git fetch as well, beforehand?

[binarykitchen]

yes, works now

[joshsleeper]

nope, on git 1.8.3.1 running git fetch beforehand changes nothing.
also, the current upgrade script already does git fetch anyway.
it _appears_ to be that git fetch in my context doesn't actually pull down tags, so it always thinks it's at the latest version?
some insight: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1204190/does-git-fetch-tags-include-git-fetch

update 1

through some testing on my own box (completely remove .nvm, reinstall 0.33.9 fresh, run manual upgrade script with custom git fetch) it appears I've got something that works.

(
  cd "$NVM_DIR"
  git fetch --tags origin
  git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match "v[0-9]*" $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1)`
) && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"

the key detail being the --tags flag to git fetch.
given the way that nvm is currently tagged, it seems that simply adding --tags is sufficient to get older git to detect the updated tag list, and thus allow upgrades.
submitting a pr shortly, but feel free to contend it if I'm wrong!

update 2

https://github.com/creationix/nvm/pull/1793