From: John Ellson Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 19:12:52 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command Message-ID: <43B586B4.5030001@research.att.com> In-Reply-To: Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, John Ellson wrote: > >> I think it is probably a bug that "git non_existent_command" >> returns its error message to stdout without an error, where >> "git-non_existent_command" behaves differently and does return an >> error. >> >> Older versions of git did not implement "git describe" and >> GIT-VERSION-GEN produces an empty version string if run on >> a system with such a git installed. The consequence >> is that "make rpm" fails. >> >> This patch fixes GIT-VERSION-GEN so that it works in the >> absence of a working "git describe" >> > > Shouldn't you make "git.c" return an error too, so that "git-describe" and > "git describe" both fail properly? > > I realize that you'd want to do your patch _too_ (in case somebody has an > old version of "git" installed), but I just think it would be sensible to > fix the problem that causes this in the first place.. > > Continuing to output to stdout rather than stderr is probably a good idea > (so that it's easy to do "git help | less" or something), but yeah, I > think an unrecognized command should at least return an error. > > Linus > I checked and that bug has been fixed since the older version of git that was causing me problems. "git non_existent_command" now returns 1. However, the error message was also changed to goto stderr, which it sounds like you disagree with? Personally I don't have a problem with it, although a real "git-help" command might be a good idea too. John