checking action of git-pull

Hello,
  I am working against a git repository which is updated at non regular
intervals; sometimes it takes a day and sometimes a week or two.

I have a script in crontab which runs daily which tries "git pull" of this repository.

I want write a bash script which echoes yhe result of this git pull to a log file in such a way that in case that any files were pulled, a short message saying "files were pulled at date ddmmyyyy" will be added to a log file. In case that there there were no changes, a message saying "Already up-to-date (ddmmyyyy) will be added to a log file.

How can it be done ? can I test somehow the return value of git pull in a bash script for these two different cases?

Regards, Mark

"Mark Ryden" <markryde@gmail.com> writes:

You know that a no-op pull does not update HEAD and a successful pull does. So your script would do something like:

	#!/bin/sh

        original_head=$(git rev-parse HEAD) || exit
        git pull origin || exit
        updated_head=$(git rev-parse HEAD) || exit
        if test "$updated_head" = "$original_head"
        then
        	echo Upstream is idling
	else
        	echo These new commits were brought in
                git shortlog $original_head..$updated_head
	fi