Re: [PATCH] branch: return error when --list finds no matches

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 4, 2021, 01:27 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr1kvemid.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <pull.892.git.1614793491538.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

"Josh Hunt via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> From: Josh Hunt <johunt@akamai.com>
>
> Currently git branch --list foo always returns an exit status of 0 even
> when the branch being searched for does not exist. Now an error is printed
> and returns a non-zero exit status.

Explaining what happens in the current code upfront is a good thing and is in line with the convention used in our project, which is good. But drop "currently" from there.

Strictly speaking, it is not "always". In a corrupt repository, it is likely to show a proper error message and die.

Also explaining what you want to happen before the end of the log message is good.

But the proposed log message lacks why it is a good idea to make such a change, which is the most important part.

If you ask me, I would say that the command was asked to show any branches, if exist, that match the given pattern, and did what it was asked to do without encountering any error---it just happened to have seen 0 branch that matched. So I think returning non-zero status would be a bug.

Thanks.