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Re: [PATCH] http-backend: write newlines to stderr when responding with errors

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Jan 11, 2026, 18:25 UTC
Message-ID
<xmqqpl7govl8.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To
<20260108225926.3587282-1-kj@kjtsanaktsidis.id.au>
KJ Tsanaktsidis <kj@kjtsanaktsidis.id.au> writes:
Show 14 quoted lines
> From: KJ Tsanaktsidis <kjtsanaktsidis@groq.com>
>
> The not_found and forbidden methods currently do not write a newline to
> stderr after the error message. This means that if git-http-backend is
> invoked through something like fcgiwrap, and the stderr of that fcgiwrap
> process is sent to a logging daemon (e.g. journald), the error messages
> of several git-http-backend invocations will just get strung together,
> e.g.
>
>> Not a git repository: '/var/lib/git/foo.git'Not a git repository: '/var/lib/git/foo.git'Not a git repository: '/var/lib/git/foo.git'
>
> I think it's git-http-backend's responsibility to format these messages
> properly, rather than it being fcgiwrap's job to notice that the script
> didn't terminate stderr with a newline and do so itself.

Now another question is which between the callers and these two helper functions is responsible to ensure that the message terminates with LF. As these functions can be called only once, I think letting them add LF makes sense (if they can be called twice or more, we can imagine that a caller may find it useful to make two calls to produce a single log entry by ending only the later call with LF, but such a use-case clearly cannot be supported with these NORETURN functions). So I think this design makes sense.

Show 17 quoted lines
> Signed-off-by: KJ Tsanaktsidis <kj@kjtsanaktsidis.id.au>
> ---
>  http-backend.c | 8 ++++++--
>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/http-backend.c b/http-backend.c
> index 52f0483dd3..bda8bb91e1 100644
> --- a/http-backend.c
> +++ b/http-backend.c
> @@ -143,8 +143,10 @@ static NORETURN void not_found(struct strbuf *hdr, const char *err, ...)
>  	end_headers(hdr);
>  
>  	va_start(params, err);
> -	if (err && *err)
> +	if (err && *err) {
>  		vfprintf(stderr, err, params);
> +		fprintf(stderr, "\n");

Somehow it feels overly heavyweight to call fprintf() just to send a single literal byte to the standard error stream. putc('\n', stderr) perhaps? The same comment forr the other hunk.

Show 16 quoted lines
> +	}
>  	va_end(params);
>  	exit(0);
>  }
> @@ -159,8 +161,10 @@ static NORETURN void forbidden(struct strbuf *hdr, const char *err, ...)
>  	end_headers(hdr);
>  
>  	va_start(params, err);
> -	if (err && *err)
> +	if (err && *err) {
>  		vfprintf(stderr, err, params);
> +		fprintf(stderr, "\n");
> +	}
>  	va_end(params);
>  	exit(0);
>  }
Previous: KJ TsanaktsidisNext: KJ Tsanaktsidis
Message 2 of 4 in “http-backend: write newlines to stderr when responding with errors”
  1. http-backend: write newlines to stderr when responding with errorsKJ Tsanaktsidis, Jan 8, 2026
  2. Junio C HamanoJan 11, 2026
  3. http-backend: write newlines to stderr when responding with errorsKJ Tsanaktsidis, Jan 12, 2026
  4. KJ TsanaktsidisJan 12, 2026

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