Re: [BUG] Strange git notes completion behaviour

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Oct 22, 2025, 09:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20251022092708.GE853931@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <013201dc42d5$07a71550$16f53ff0$@nexbridge.com>

On Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 05:52:38PM -0400, rsbecker@nexbridge.com wrote:

> It is the exit code. When in gdb, the return from notes is -12 as above. By the time
> It gets back to bash, the lower bytes are dropped so I end up with a 0xFF, which
> bash thinks is a 0, so the exit code is hidden from view. I tried the !!fn construct
> in a standard alone test program with no wisdom gained.

I don't think the "!!fn()" line ever returns here. In the show() function of builtin/notes.c (which is what "fn" is pointing to for "git notes show"), we end up calling execv_git_cmd() to run "git show". So you are really seeing the exit code of something like:

  git show $(git notes list HEAD)

That in turn is propagating the return from show_blob_object(). Which I'd think would return "0" here, since it actually showed the blob, though it does look like it could return -1 in a few cases.

Another possible point of confusion: that git-show invocation will run a pager. It's been a long time since I've looked at that code, but IIRC we try to preserve the exit code of the actual Git command (rather than the pager). But you might try:

  git --no-pager notes show HEAD

to see if that behaves differently. I couldn't reproduce the issue at all on my end.

-Peff