Re: Writing to err vs std

From: Jay Asbury <vbjay.net@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 9, 2023, 00:15 UTC
Message-ID: <CAH74SFQ9A-hcRfrDs_vE-QhhYTB6V=dbBQQM_0Qdbx88XREwpw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq7cvqrdu6.fsf@gitster.g>

Thanks for the clarification. Some context. https://github.com/gitextensions/gitextensions/issues/9643 which is a side effect of https://github.com/gitextensions/gitextensions/pull/9562

So I just wanted to get some clarification on when err vs std should be used to eliminate confusion.

On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 7:02 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 22 quoted lines

>
> Jay Asbury <vbjay.net@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I see things like git fetch and other processing writing details to
> > stderr and not std.
>
> I assume you meant "not to standard output".
>
> As a rule of thumb, the core of the output, the information the
> end-user asked for, is sent to the standard output, whether it is
> machine parseable or otherwise.  And other stuff like progress
> meter, warning and advice messages, are sent to the standard error.
>
> This should be documented already in Documentation/CodingGuidelines
> for our developers.  Do you think it needs to be documented for
> end-users?  I suspect that rather than such "principle", they are
> more interested in seeing what message can be squelched with --quiet
> and what can be piped to downstream with "git foo |" on case-by-case
> basis individually.
>
>
>

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Jay Asbury
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