From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:42:48 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] diff --no-index: test for pager after option parsing
Message-ID: <20090107064248.GC22616@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090107032013.GO21154@genesis.frugalware.org>

On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 04:20:13AM +0100, Miklos Vajna wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 04:09:18PM -0800, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> > But I wonder if it still makes a difference in real life.idn't we stop
> > reporting the exit status from the pager some time ago?
> 
> I just wanted to write this, I think that code could be just removed
> since ea27a18 (spawn pager via run_command interface, 2008-07-22).

I don't think just removing it is right. You would also need to put
SETUP_PAGER into the flags for calling cmd_diff.

We do pass along the error code properly these days, but I think it is
nice that --exit-code always just suppresses the pager. Otherwise a
script like this:

  if git diff --exit-code $x $y; then
    do something
  fi

will invoke the pager (and not everybody's setup immediately exits if
there is no output, either because they have different LESS options or
because they use a different pager). Of course one might argue that the
script should not be using "git diff" porcelain at all, but I don't
think there is another way to get a --no-index diff.

-Peff