Re: Fix 'git log' early pager startup error case

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 25, 2010, 19:16 UTC
Message-ID: <7vtymiqz9c.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1008241029530.1046@i5.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> We start the pager too early for several git commands, which results in 
> the errors sometimes going to the pager rather than show up as errors.

Hmm...

  $ LESS=-S git log --prettty; echo $?
  ... less shows the message and then the message is lost from the screen
  128
  $ git --no-pager log --prettty; echo $?
  fatal: unrecognized argument: --prettty
  128
  $ LESS=-S git log --prettty 2>err; echo $?; cat err
  ... less shows empty and then screen snaps back
  128
  fatal: unrecognized argument: --prettty
  $ git --no-pager log --prettty 2>err; echo $?; cat err
  128
  fatal: unrecognized argument: --prettty

In all cases when the user wants to see the error message s/he sees it, when the user wants to capture it to a file, it is captured, and the correct error status is returned to the calling shell.

The only difference is that after the user dismisses the pager, the error message is lost. I am not sure if that is a problem, though.

Ah, there actually is another difference.  This is broken:

  $ PAGER=no-such-pager git log --prettty; echo $?
  ... nothing is shown here ...
  128

and with yours:

  $ PAGER=no-such-pager ./git log --prettty; echo $?
  fatal: unrecognized argument: --prettty
  128

Thanks.