From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:57:30 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/4] run_builtin(): save "-h" detection result for later use
Message-ID: <7vsjzzrw6d.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1287544320-8499-2-git-send-email-pclouds@gmail.com>

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

> When run_builtin() sees "-h" as the first argument, it assumes:
>
>  - this is the call for help usage
>  - the real git command will only print help usage then exit
>
> So it skips all setup in this case.  Unfortunately, some commands do
> other things before calling parse_options(), which is often where the
> help usage is printed.  Some of those things may try to access the
> repository unnecessarily. If a repository is broken, the command may
> die() before it prints help usage, not really helpful.

What does die() message say in that case?  If it says "your repository is
broken", that may be more useful than giving a help message.  I dunno.

> Demonstrating "git foo -h" fails depends on individual commands and
> is generally difficult to do. Instead GIT_TRACE is used to check
> if a command does set repo. If it does, it is supposed to fail if
> repo setup code chokes.

Hmm, I am not sure I understand this one.  If you are interested in
changing the behaviour of these commands when run with "-h" in a corrupt
repository, perhaps you can deliberately corrupt the test repository in
the trash directory you start with, and run these commands there, no?
For a good measure, you could use CEILING_DIRECTORIES to make sure the
tests do not climb up to the project repository.