Confusing error message when using GitHub's SSH URL

[LukeMathWalker]

Problem

It is fairly common for a Rust user to assume that the URL you get from GitHub to clone a repository (e.g. git@github.com:rust-lang/cargo.git for Cargo) should be a valid value for the git field in a dependency or when doing cargo install --git <URL>.

It isn't, and that's OK.
But we also don't nudge the user in the right direction.

The first error they get is:

error: invalid url `<URL>`: relative URL without a base

If they figure out they need to add ssh:// in front, the error becomes:

error: invalid url `ssh://git@github.com:{org_name}/{repo_name}.git`: invalid port number

because the org name is interpreted as a port number (which isn't obvious from the error message, since it doesn't say what is being picked up as port number).

Steps

No response

Possible Solution(s)

I'd love to see better diagnostics from cargo on this.
If the format of the URL matches what GitHub provides, we should be able to suggest the correct value (i.e. from git@github.com:{org_name}/{repo_name}.git to ssh://git@github.com/{org_name}/{repo_name}.git).

Notes

No response

Version

No response

[epage]

I remember us having a PR that did some special logic for github, improving error messages I think. Unfortunately, searching for "github" on github doesn't return a lot of quality results.

[LukeMathWalker]

I tried searching as well before opening the issue, but nothing came up as duplicate/highly-related.

[ehuss]

I'm a little confused, as I'm uncertain why this would be specific to GitHub? The git@github.com:rust-lang/cargo.git is just a normal git SSH shorthand, it works with any host.

(If we bother to add a parser for it, we should probably just support the shorthand à la #1851.)

[ehuss]

Oh, btw, we added ssh shorthand support for submodules in #7238.

[LukeMathWalker]

I'm a little confused, as I'm uncertain why this would be specific to GitHub?

It's not specific to GitHub, but I'm assuming that's the reason most people run into this issue.

[LukeMathWalker]

I'm also not an expert in SSH formats 😅

[weihanglo]

I'd like to see some improvements on it, specifically the first one error: invalid url : relative URL without a base.

Though I don't really have time thinking hard.