Junio C HamanoIn general "echo 2>&1 $msg" to redirect a possible error message that comes from 'echo' itself into the same standard output stream $msg is getting written to does not make any sense; it is not like we are expecting to see any errors out of 'echo' in these statements, and even if it were the case, there is no reason to prevent the error messages from being sent to the standard error stream.
These are clearly meant to send the argument given to echo to the standard error stream as error messages. Correctly redirect by saying "send what is written to the standard output to the standard error", i.e. "1>&2" aka ">&2".
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> ---
* There are two more uses of 2>&1 in the Makefile, and they are correct.
- The one in dep_check one is used as
dep_check = $(shell ... 2>&1; echo $$?)
and it is an attempt to make sure that anything sent to the
standard error is not leaked out of the shell substitution. It
does want to send whatever is written to the standard error
instead written to the standard output. - The other is "cmp ... >/dev/null 2>&1", which is a typical way
to squelch both the standard output and the standard error for
any command.Makefile | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Show changes to Makefile +2 −2
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile index 8700db8..296f175 100644 --- a/Makefile +++ b/Makefile @@ -2211,10 +2211,10 @@ sparse: $(SP_OBJ) check: common-cmds.h @if sparse; \ then \ - echo 2>&1 "Use 'make sparse' instead"; \ + echo >&2 "Use 'make sparse' instead"; \ $(MAKE) --no-print-directory sparse; \ else \ - echo 2>&1 "Did you mean 'make test'?"; \ + echo >&2 "Did you mean 'make test'?"; \ exit 1; \ fi