`The current directory is not a valid dolt repository.` inconsistently reported inside a dolt repository

[platy]

Hi, I'm new to dolt and evaluating it for our use case.

I was working on quite a large number of changes in my local dolt, then I realised I was on main and wanted to create a branch to work on, but got this error.

❯dolt checkout -b add_history
The current directory is not a valid dolt repository.
run: dolt init before trying to run this command

This error happened every time I tried to create a new branch like this, but dolt status showed my untracked changes, and dolt sql allowed making changes to the DB:

❯dolt status
On branch main
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "dolt add <table>" to update what will be committed)
  (use "dolt checkout <table>" to discard changes in working directory)
        deleted:          entries

Untracked tables:
  (use "dolt add <table>" to include in what will be committed)

Eventually I thought maybe that dolt init would fix the issue as it was telling me to do it, and I figured it wouldn't wipe my local repo, but ...

❯dolt init
Successfully initialized dolt data repository.

❯dolt status
On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

So something strange is going on here, I would expect all dolt commands to consistently be able to tell if there is a dolt repo initialised, or report that the repo is corrupt somehow. And dolt init probably shouldn't wipe out an existing repo without confirmation.

[platy]

Whoops - my mistake - it took writing it out to figure out what was going on, I was in the parent directory, and there dolt status still works - I don't know how. It's still a bit weird but it's much better than what I was reporting above

[timsehn]

It does seem weird that dolt status would work in the parent directory.

There's a bit of weirdness in merging the git and mysql concepts with regards to directories. For instance, if you navigate to a directory named foo, run dolt sql-server and then create database bar, there will be a directory foo/bar and that is where you would run dolt CLI commands like dolt checkout. Your database will be named bar. Conversely if you had run dolt init in the foo directory, you would have a database named foo and you can run dolt CLI commands in foo.

This is all a bit confusing. The other thing that happens is that the dolt CLI connects to a running SQL server if one exists so I bet, that is why dolt status would work and dolt checkout would not. I'll re-open because we should build a bunch of tests for these edge cases so we have defined behavior.

[platy]

Ah thanks - that helps me to understand this quirkiness

[timsehn]

Cleaned this up in this PR: #10289