[RFC/PATCH] gitweb: Fail early

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: May 19, 2009, 20:40 UTC
Message-ID: <200905192240.34199.jnareb@gmail.com>

Return HTTP 500 Internal Server Error if $GIT is not defined (which would cause Perl error), or if "$GIT --version" failed to run. This should not happen often, but I think this change would make diagnosing misconfiguration easier. --- Is "git version" in 'git --version' output ensured? How did other git implementations and ports (like msysGit and jgit) output of --version looks like?

Does it make sense to check whether output matches, and if it doesn't match assume that $GIT points to something other, perhaps some other git like GIT Interactive Tools or something?

Does it makes sense to try various other checks to make error message more detailed like $GIT is not found, or is not executable?

diff --git i/gitweb/gitweb.perl w/gitweb/gitweb.perl
index 05702e4..0cb53ca 100755
--- i/gitweb/gitweb.perl
+++ w/gitweb/gitweb.perl
@@ -471,7 +471,13 @@ if (-e $GITWEB_CONFIG) {
 }
 
 # version of the core git binary
+if (!defined $GIT) {
+	die_error(500, "Undefined path to git binary");
+}
 our $git_version = qx("$GIT" --version) =~ m/git version (.*)$/ ? $1 : "unknown";
+if ($?) {
+	die_error(500, "Error calling '$GIT --version': $?");
+}
 
 $projects_list ||= $projectroot;