Re: Git branch outputs usage message on stderr

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 15, 2025, 15:28 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqed1414gt.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <D72M6S9O1E9F.WVEBV7ZJ1JTC@cepl.eu>

Matěj Cepl <mcepl@cepl.eu> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Wed Jan 15, 2025 at 12:22 PM CET, Jonas Konrad wrote:
>> What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)
>> I opened a terminal on Arch Linux with a bash shell and called `git 
>> branch -h` to get a usage overview of git's `branch` command. I then 
>> tried processing the output with `grep` by `git branch -h | grep list` 
>> which gave the whole (unfiltered) output, i.e., the displayed message 
>> was not processed by `grep`.
>
> And that is exactly the correct behaviour. In the world of UNIX,
> where pipes are normal, utilities should send to the stdout
> only substantial material, ...

If I understand the case Jonas reports correctly, he is talking about "git branch -h<RETURN>", and the "substantial material" (I'd rather phrase it as the primary output in response to the end user request) in that case is the help text.

Somebody may want to go over "git help --all" and for each of them try "git $cmd -h >/dev/null" to find those that give the help output to their standard error stream.

Thanks, both.