[RFE] git rebase doesn't say it failed

Hello!

What happened:
  I tried to do a rebase and got a message about files "needs  
update".  However, it didn't say it did a rebase nor did it say that  
it failed.
Example:
+ git rebase origin/master
f1: needs update

What I expected:
  It should have said that it was unable to rebase because of these  
files.
Example:
+ git rebase origin/master
f1: needs update
Git was unable to rebase due to the files above.  Please commit them  
or move them out of the way.
Hint: See "git reset --help" for a suggestion about saving work in  
progress.

Notes: I have had several users at the company that I work think that these messages meant that it worked fine. There are some commands (like reset, co, etc.) that show these kind of messages and it isn't an error; they were conditioned to think they were acceptable messages.

version: 1.5.4.3

Shell script to recreate the problem: #!/bin/sh

set -eux

rm -rf a b mkdir a cd a git init echo 1 > f1 echo 1 > f2 git add f? git commit -m "init"

cd .. git clone a b

cd b echo 1.5 > f1

cd ../a echo 2 > f2 git commit -m "2" f2

cd ../b git fetch git rebase origin/master

#EOF

Hi,

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Christian Holtje wrote:

It told you that a file is dirty. Git kinda expects you to know that it will not start a rebase on a dirty working directory.

So there _was_ an (implicit) message saying that it failed.

The same comment I gave last week applies here: people complained that Git was too chatty. I tend to agree, since the important information was lost in the huge amount of text. Now you say we should make it chatty again?

Hth, Dscho

Johannes Schindelin wrote:

--verbose option, anyone?

Hi,

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008, Jakub Narebski wrote:

Patches welcome, Dscho

On Mar 10, 2008, at 7:10 AM, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

I can see the problem with commands that execute correctly being too chatty, but here the command requested was not performed. In the name of terseness, how about simply saying "rebase was not performed."

As a general rule, though, when I generate an error message I try to explain what happened and how the user should fix it, which is why I included the more verbose version above.

Ciao!