Re: [PATCH] Add ERR support to smart HTTP

> On Mon, Sep 6, 2010, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 6:34 AM, Sitaram Chamarty  
>> <sitaramc@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 2:52 AM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>  
>>> wrote:
>>>> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 18:49, Ilari Liusvaara
>>>>> <ilari.liusvaara@elisanet.fi> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> AFAIK, HTTP errors don't have descriptions printed.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't know if this applies here but HTTP error codes can come  
>>>>> with
>>>>> any free-form \n-delimited string:
>>>>>
>>>>>     HTTP/1.1 402 You Must Build Additional Pylons
>>>>
>>>> And you can also send more detailed description in the *body*  
>>>> (and not
>>>> only HTTP headers) of HTTP response, though I don't know if git  
>>>> does
>>>> that.
>>
>> turns out all this was moot.  It was *because* I was using something
>> other than "200 OK" that the user was not seeing the message.   
>> Ilari's
>> patch just makes the message *look* better/cleaner, but I still have
>> to send it out with a "200 OK" status.
>>
>> That was... a surprise :-)
>
> From what I remember from smart HTTP discussion (during fleshing-out
> the protocol/exchange details), the fact that errors from git are send
> with "200 OK" HTTP status are very much conscious decision.  But I  
> don't
> remember *why* it was chosen this way.  If I remember correctly it was
> something about transparent proxies and caches...  Is it documented
> anywhere?  Can anyone explain it?