git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: git log --encoding=HTML is not supported

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
Aug 27, 2021, 18:30 UTC
Message-ID
<YSkvNyR4uT52de13@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<xmqqeeahjxj4.fsf@gitster.g>
On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 09:31:59AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
Show 17 quoted lines
> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > We feed the encoding "HTML" to iconv_open(), which of course has no idea
> > what that is. It's unfortunate, though, that we don't even print a
> > warning, and instead just quietly leave the text intact. I wonder if we
> > should do something like:
> [...]
> This addition sounds quite sensible to me.
> 
> "git log --encoding=bogus" would issue this warning for each and
> every commit and that may be a bit irritating, but being irritating
> may be a good characteristic for a warning message that is given to
> an easily correctable condition.
> 
> I originally thought that the warning would be lost to the pager,
> but apparently I forgot what I did eons ago at 61b80509 (sending
> errors to stdout under $PAGER, 2008-02-16) ;-).
Here it is polished into a real commit.
-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] logmsg_reencode(): warn when iconv() fails

If the user asks for a pretty-printed commit to be converted (either explicitly with --encoding=foo, or implicitly because the commit is non-utf8 and we want to convert it), we pass it through iconv(). If that fails, we fall back to showing the input verbatim, but don't tell the user that the output may be bogus.

Let's add a warning to do so, along with a mention in the documentation for --encoding. Two things to note about the implementation:

  - we could produce the warning closer to the call to iconv() in
    reencode_string_len(), which would let us relay the value of errno.
    But this is not actually very helpful. reencode_string_len() does
    not know we are operating on a commit, and indeed does not know that
    the caller won't produce an error of its own. And the errno values
    from iconv() are seldom helpful (iconv_open() only ever produces
    EINVAL; perhaps EILSEQ from iconv() might be illuminating, but it
    can also return EINVAL for incomplete sequences).
  - if the reason for the failure is that the output charset is not
    supported, then the user will see this warning for every commit we
    try to display. That might be ugly and overwhelming, but on the
    other hand it is making it clear that every one of them has not been
    converted (and the likely outcome anyway is to re-try the command
    with a supported output encoding).
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 Documentation/pretty-options.txt | 4 +++-
 pretty.c                         | 6 +++++-
 t/t4210-log-i18n.sh              | 7 +++++++
 3 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/pretty-options.txt b/Documentation/pretty-options.txt
index 27ddaf84a1..42b227bc40 100644
--- a/Documentation/pretty-options.txt
+++ b/Documentation/pretty-options.txt
@@ -40,7 +40,9 @@ people using 80-column terminals.
 	defaults to UTF-8. Note that if an object claims to be encoded
 	in `X` and we are outputting in `X`, we will output the object
 	verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the original
-	commit may be copied to the output.
+	commit may be copied to the output. Likewise, if iconv(3) fails
+	to convert the commit, we will output the original object
+	verbatim, along with a warning.
 
 --expand-tabs=<n>::
 --expand-tabs::
diff --git a/pretty.c b/pretty.c
index 9631529c10..73b5ead509 100644
--- a/pretty.c
+++ b/pretty.c
@@ -671,7 +671,11 @@ const char *repo_logmsg_reencode(struct repository *r,
 	 * If the re-encoding failed, out might be NULL here; in that
 	 * case we just return the commit message verbatim.
 	 */
-	return out ? out : msg;
+	if (!out) {
+		warning("unable to reencode commit to '%s'", output_encoding);
+		return msg;
+	}
+	return out;
 }
 
 static int mailmap_name(const char **email, size_t *email_len,
diff --git a/t/t4210-log-i18n.sh b/t/t4210-log-i18n.sh
index d2dfcf164e..0141f36e33 100755
--- a/t/t4210-log-i18n.sh
+++ b/t/t4210-log-i18n.sh
@@ -131,4 +131,11 @@ do
 	fi
 done
 
+test_expect_success 'log shows warning when conversion fails' '
+	enc=this-encoding-does-not-exist &&
+	git log -1 --encoding=$enc 2>err &&
+	echo "warning: unable to reencode commit to ${SQ}${enc}${SQ}" >expect &&
+	test_cmp expect err
+'
+
 test_done
-- 
2.33.0.396.g72f622fe47
Previous: Junio C HamanoNext: Jeff King
Message 8 of 33 in “git log --encoding=HTML is not supported”
  1. Krzysztof ŻelechowskiAug 24, 2021
  2. Bagas SanjayaAug 24, 2021
  3. Krzysztof ŻelechowskiAug 24, 2021
  4. Bagas SanjayaAug 24, 2021
  5. Junio C HamanoAug 24, 2021
  6. Jeff KingAug 25, 2021
  7. Junio C HamanoAug 25, 2021
  8. Jeff KingAug 27, 2021
  9. Jeff KingAug 27, 2021
  10. Junio C HamanoAug 27, 2021
  11. *Really* noisy encoding warnings post-v2.33.0Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Oct 9, 2021
  12. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonOct 9, 2021
  13. Jeff KingOct 9, 2021
  14. Jeff KingOct 9, 2021
  15. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonOct 9, 2021
  16. Jeff KingOct 27, 2021
  17. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonOct 29, 2021
  18. Jeff KingOct 29, 2021
  19. Junio C HamanoOct 29, 2021
  20. Junio C HamanoOct 29, 2021
  21. Jeff KingOct 29, 2021
  22. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonOct 22, 2021
  23. Johannes SixtOct 10, 2021
  24. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonOct 10, 2021
  25. Krzysztof ŻelechowskiAug 25, 2021
  26. Jeff KingAug 27, 2021
  27. Krzysztof ŻelechowskiAug 25, 2021
  28. Bryan TurnerAug 25, 2021
  29. Junio C HamanoAug 26, 2021
  30. Krzysztof ŻelechowskiAug 26, 2021
  31. Junio C HamanoAug 27, 2021
  32. Jeff KingAug 27, 2021
  33. Junio C HamanoAug 27, 2021

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.