Re: [PATCH 3/3] mingw: document the experimental standard handle redirection

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 1, 2017, 04:58 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq4lqevbmk.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1.1710311807420.6482@virtualbox>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

>> > +Two special values are supported: `off` will simply close the
>> > +corresponding standard handle, and if `GIT_REDIRECT_STDERR` is
>> > +`2>&1`, standard error will be redirected to the same handle as
>> > +standard output.
>> 
>> Consistent with the Unixy special-case for '2>&1', I wonder if the
>> 'off' case would be more intuitively stated as '>/dev/null' or just
>> '/dev/null'...
>
> I feel this is the wrong way round. `>/dev/null` may sound very intuitive
> to you, but this feature is Windows only. Guess three times how intuitive
> it sounds to Windows developers to write `>/dev/null` if you want to
> suppress output...

It would be just as intuitive to write '2>&1' for dup-redirection, so I tend to agree with both of you in that perhaps '2>&1' may have to become less Unix-y (or more Windows-y) to make these special cases more consistent. Perhaps "dup-to-stdout" or even just "stdout".

	Side note: if we really wanted to go in the other direction
	Eric suggests, "off" probably should be spelled as ">&-" ;-)

By the way, the description talks about "special values", but it leaves it completely unclear what their normal values mean. Are they filenames, or integers that denote file descriptors, or something else? To those who read, wrote, or reviewed the code in these patches, the answer is obvious (and I do *not* want you to give your answer to *me* in your response for that reason). But we'd want to give the answer to future readers by clarifying this documentation.