Re: fatal output from git-show really wants a terminal

From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: Dec 10, 2008, 19:46 UTC
Message-ID: <200812102046.50186.j6t@kdbg.org>
In-Reply-To: <ghop5d$qud$1@ger.gmane.org>

On Mittwoch, 10. Dezember 2008, Tim Olsen wrote:

> It appears that when outputting a fatal error, git-show will choose
> stdout over stderr if stdout is a terminal and stderr is not.

This is by design.

> How do I 
> redirect the error but still allow stdout to be displayed?

$ git show 12345 2> /dev/null | less

Show 7 quoted lines

> ~/git$ mkdir test
> ~/git$ cd test
> ~/git/test$ git init
> ~/git/test$ git show 12345
> fatal: ambiguous argument '12345': unknown revision or path not in the
> working tree.
> Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

You see this through the pager.

> ~/git/test$ git show 12345 2> /dev/null
> fatal: ambiguous argument '12345': unknown revision or path not in the
> working tree.
> Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

And this went through the pager as well.

> ~/git/test$ git show 12345 > /dev/null
> fatal: ambiguous argument '12345': unknown revision or path not in the
> working tree.
> Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

This went straight to the terminal.

The pattern is that if stdout is a terminal, the pager is thrown up and both stdout and stderr of git show proper are redirected to the pager. If you redirect only stderr, then this redirection is actually ignored.

-- Hannes