From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:23:40 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] t1401: check symbolic-ref exit codes and --quiet silence
Message-ID: <xmqqbjarqswj.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <aoyBxOCdAq3qeAvW@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

> I'm still not completely sold that this difference is intentional. As
> you mentioned elsewhere, in one code path we use `exit(1)` and in the
> other we use `die(...)` to print an error message, which returs 128. But
> that to me feels more like nobody noticed that those return different
> error codes rather than an intentional difference in design, so casting
> that behaviour into stone with new tests feels wrong to me.

I tend to agree.  The choice of 1 would have been more about "we
need to exit with non-zero status" than "we need to use something
different from what is used by die()".

> I'd suggest that we either:
>
>   - Continue not checking for the exact error code.
>
>   - Adapt the `exit(1)` to instead be `die(NULL)` so that we have the
>     same error code across both code paths and then verify that both
>     have the same error code.

Both sounds very sensible.

Especially the former to avoid overspecifying what does not matter
in the end.

Thanks.