ensure local trunk branch for required operations

[skarim]

When a user starts a stack after renaming their initial branch (e.g. git branch -m newbranch), the trunk branch (e.g. main) may not exist as a local branch. Commands that pass the trunk name to git operations like merge-base, rebase, or rev-parse then fail with:

✗ failed to check linearity for skarim/api-token-warning: failed to run git: fatal: Not a valid object name main

The fix adds an ensureLocalTrunk helper that checks whether trunk exists locally and, if not, fetches it from the remote and creates a local tracking branch. This mirrors the pattern already used in the checkout command for importing stacks.

Changes

cmd/utils.go:

• ensureLocalTrunk: New helper — checks BranchExists(trunk), returns early if present. Otherwise calls FetchBranches(remote, [trunk]) then CreateBranch(trunk, remote+"/"+trunk). Logs a success message when creating.
• fastForwardTrunk: Fix incorrect comment that claimed "the remote tracking ref is sufficient for rebasing" — verified empirically that git rebase main fails when main has no local branch, even after fetching origin/main.

cmd/modify.go:

• In checkModifyPreconditions, resolve the remote and call ensureLocalTrunk before CheckStackLinearity. This is the originally reported failure — IsAncestor(trunk, branch) crashed without a local trunk.

cmd/rebase.go:

• In runRebase, call ensureLocalTrunk after fetch and before fastForwardTrunk and the cascade rebase. git rebase requires a locally resolvable ref; the remote tracking ref alone is not sufficient.

cmd/trunk.go:

• In runTrunk, call ensureLocalTrunk before CheckoutBranch so that gh stack trunk works even when trunk was never created locally. Only resolves the remote if trunk is actually missing.

cmd/checkout.go:

• Refactor the existing inline BranchExists + CreateBranch block to use the shared ensureLocalTrunk helper (DRY).

Commands already safe (no changes needed)

Command	Why
sync	Fetches trunk explicitly; fastForwardTrunk guards with BranchExists
push, switch, navigate, unstack	Do not reference trunk
add, submit	Do not require trunk as a local git ref
view	Handles IsAncestor errors gracefully (false positive is acceptable since rebase will fix it)

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR fixes a class of errors that occur when users start a stack after renaming their initial branch (e.g., git branch -m newbranch), causing the trunk branch (like main) to not exist locally. Commands that reference trunk in git operations (merge-base, rebase, rev-parse) would fail. The fix introduces a shared ensureLocalTrunk helper that fetches and creates a local tracking branch when trunk is missing, then integrates it into all commands that need trunk to exist locally.

Changes:

• New ensureLocalTrunk helper in cmd/utils.go that checks if trunk exists locally, and if not, fetches and creates it from the remote tracking branch.
• Integrated the helper into modify, rebase, trunk, and checkout commands, with the checkout.go refactored to use the shared helper (DRY).
• Updated the fastForwardTrunk comment to correctly reflect that callers should use ensureLocalTrunk beforehand.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
cmd/utils.go	Adds ensureLocalTrunk helper and updates fastForwardTrunk comment
cmd/utils_test.go	Tests for the new helper covering all branches (exists, fetch+create, fetch fail, create fail)
cmd/modify.go	Calls ensureLocalTrunk in checkModifyPreconditions before linearity check
cmd/rebase.go	Calls ensureLocalTrunk after fetch and before cascade rebase
cmd/trunk.go	Calls ensureLocalTrunk gated behind !BranchExists before checkout
cmd/trunk_test.go	Integration test for trunk command when trunk is missing locally
cmd/checkout.go	Refactors inline trunk creation to use the shared helper

Copilot's findings

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• Files reviewed: 7/7 changed files
• Comments generated: 1

[ktravers]

Nice, I was going to ask about this in #125, since it seemed like a pre-req.