threads / patch / 2945

patchMake GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

Subject: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

## tl;dr

6 messages between Dec 30, 2005 and Dec 31, 2005. Diffs are folded; open one to read it.

replies: 5people: 3as markdown or json

John Ellson· Dec 30, 2005, 16:23 UTC · lore

I think it is probably a bug that "git non_existent_command" returns its error message to stdout without an error, where "git-non_existent_command" behaves differently and does return an error.

Older versions of git did not implement "git describe" and GIT-VERSION-GEN produces an empty version string if run on a system with such a git installed. The consequence is that "make rpm" fails.

This patch fixes GIT-VERSION-GEN so that it works in the absence of a working "git describe"

----------------------------------------

Show changes to GIT-VERSION-GEN +1 −1

diff --git a/GIT-VERSION-GEN b/GIT-VERSION-GEN
index 196402c..845b9dc 100755
--- a/GIT-VERSION-GEN
+++ b/GIT-VERSION-GEN
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@

  GVF=GIT-VERSION-FILE

-VN=$(git describe --abbrev=4 HEAD 2>/dev/null) || VN=v1.0.GIT
+VN=$(git-describe --abbrev=4 HEAD 2>/dev/null) || VN=v1.0.GIT
  VN=$(expr "$VN" : v'\(.*\)')
  if test -r $GVF
  then

----------------------------------------


Signed-off-by: John Ellson <ellson@research.att.com>

Linus Torvalds· Dec 30, 2005, 18:49 UTC · re: John Ellson · lore

Re: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, John Ellson wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

>
> I think it is probably a bug that "git non_existent_command"
> returns its error message to stdout without an error, where
> "git-non_existent_command" behaves differently and does return an
> error.
> 
> Older versions of git did not implement "git describe"  and
> GIT-VERSION-GEN produces an empty version string if run on
> a system with such a git installed.  The consequence
> is that "make rpm" fails.
> 
> This patch fixes GIT-VERSION-GEN so that it works in the
> absence of a working "git describe"

Shouldn't you make "git.c" return an error too, so that "git-describe" and "git describe" both fail properly?

I realize that you'd want to do your patch _too_ (in case somebody has an old version of "git" installed), but I just think it would be sensible to fix the problem that causes this in the first place..

Continuing to output to stdout rather than stderr is probably a good idea (so that it's easy to do "git help | less" or something), but yeah, I think an unrecognized command should at least return an error.

		Linus

John Ellson· Dec 30, 2005, 19:12 UTC · re: Linus Torvalds · lore

Re: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 29 quoted lines

> On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, John Ellson wrote:
>   
>> I think it is probably a bug that "git non_existent_command"
>> returns its error message to stdout without an error, where
>> "git-non_existent_command" behaves differently and does return an
>> error.
>>
>> Older versions of git did not implement "git describe"  and
>> GIT-VERSION-GEN produces an empty version string if run on
>> a system with such a git installed.  The consequence
>> is that "make rpm" fails.
>>
>> This patch fixes GIT-VERSION-GEN so that it works in the
>> absence of a working "git describe"
>>     
>
> Shouldn't you make "git.c" return an error too, so that "git-describe" and 
> "git describe" both fail properly?
>
> I realize that you'd want to do your patch _too_ (in case somebody has an 
> old version of "git" installed), but I just think it would be sensible to 
> fix the problem that causes this in the first place..
>
> Continuing to output to stdout rather than stderr is probably a good idea 
> (so that it's easy to do "git help | less" or something), but yeah, I 
> think an unrecognized command should at least return an error.
>
> 		Linus
>

I checked and that bug has been fixed since the older version of git that was causing me problems. "git non_existent_command" now returns 1. However, the error message was also changed to goto stderr, which it sounds like you disagree with? Personally I don't have a problem with it, although a real "git-help" command might be a good idea too.

John

Linus Torvalds· Dec 30, 2005, 19:55 UTC · re: John Ellson · lore

Re: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, John Ellson wrote:

> 
> I checked and that bug has been fixed since the older version of git that
> was causing me problems. "git non_existent_command" now returns 1.

Ahh, good.

> However, the error message was also changed to goto stderr, which it 
> sounds like you disagree with?

Not that I can see:

	[torvalds@g5 ~]$ git --version
	git version 1.0.6-g58e3
	[torvalds@g5 ~]$ git hjsdhjas > /dev/null 
	[torvalds@g5 ~]$ echo $?
	1

so yes, it returns a proper error, and it outputs the help message to stdout, not stderr. Which is fine, because it means that you can indeed do

	git help | less

and it will do the right thing (apart from printing the line

	git: 'help' is not a git-command

which is a bit sad).

		Linus

John Ellson· Dec 30, 2005, 19:31 UTC · re: John Ellson · lore

Re: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

John Ellson wrote:

> I think it is probably a bug that "git non_existent_command"
> returns its error message to stdout without an error, where
> "git-non_existent_command" behaves differently and does return an
> error.

BTW. Its the old shell-script version of "git" that fails to return an error on non_existent_commands. The newer C version of "git" correctly returns an error code.

The reason that this is a sufficiently serious problem to require a fix is that the broken version of "git" is in the git-core-0.99.9a-2.fc5.i386.rpm that is currently in Fedora Core Extras development.

John

H. Peter Anvin· Dec 31, 2005, 00:15 UTC · re: John Ellson · lore

Re: [PATCH] Make GIT-VERSION-GEN tolerate missing git describe command

John Ellson wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> John Ellson wrote:
> 
>> I think it is probably a bug that "git non_existent_command"
>> returns its error message to stdout without an error, where
>> "git-non_existent_command" behaves differently and does return an
>> error.
> 
> 
> BTW.  Its the old shell-script version of "git" that fails to return an 
> error on non_existent_commands.    The newer C version of "git" 
> correctly returns an error code.
> 
> The reason that this is a sufficiently serious problem to require a fix 
> is that the broken version of "git" is in the 
> git-core-0.99.9a-2.fc5.i386.rpm that is currently in Fedora Core Extras 
> development.
>

It has been fixed. What's broken is that Fedora Extras still contains 0.99.9a which is totally ancient.

	-hpa