Re: [PATCH] pager: die when paging to non-existing command

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 20, 2024, 22:35 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqplsbqm2l.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <ba5965c2-9f1c-4dd2-a2c5-e1bde832766c@kdbg.org>

Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Am 20.06.24 um 21:04 schrieb Junio C Hamano:
>> Just in case there is a reason why we should instead silently return
>> on MinGW, I'll Cc the author of bfdd9ffd, though.
>
> I don't think there is a reason. IIRC, originally on Windows, failing to
> start a pager would still let Git operate normally, just without paged
> output. I might have regarded this as better than to fail the operation.

The "better keep going than to fail" is what Rubén finds worse, so both sides are quite understandable.

It is unlikely that real-world users are taking advantage of the fact. If they do not want their invocation of Git command paged, "GIT_PAGER=cat git foo" is just as easy as "GIT_PAGER=no git foo", and if it was done by mistake to configure a non-working pager (e.g., configure core.pager to the program xyzzy and then uninstalling xyzzy without realizing you still have users), fixing it would be a one-time operation either way (you update core.pager or you reinstall xyzzy), so I would say that it is better to make the failure more stand out.

Thanks for a quick response.