error on line 87

[hugeblank]

After cloning so many times I get this error message:
github:87: Could not get github API from repos/hugeblank/BagelBot/git/trees/unstable-as
What would be the cause of this? the repo is in existence, and I had no prior problems with it. I have also found that after a 5-10 minute wait that this issue fixes itself, but it eventually occurs again.

[eric-wieser]

You're hitting the GitHub rate limiting. It would be good if I could give a better error message, but from what I remember the http functions don't give you the status code.

Authenticating should up your allowed rate

[hugeblank]

yeah that would explain it. Thanks for the info, I figured it would have something to do with that.

[danports]

Thanks guys - I ran into the same thing and this issue was really helpful. A simple program like this can display your rate limit status (without authentication):

print(http.get("https://api.github.com/rate_limit", nil).readAll())

@eric-wieser It might be helpful to modify the text of the error raised to suggest rate limiting as a possible cause and authentication as the solution.

[eric-wieser]

@danports: Would welcome a patch that catches that error with pcall, and then checks the rate_limit to see if that's the cause

[danports]

That's one option...I was thinking something even simpler to start with, i.e. just adding a suggestion to check your rate limit to the string passed to error, without adding any new logic.