Re: [PATCH] gc: introduce an --auto-exit-code option for undoing 3029970275

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] gc: introduce an --auto-exit-code option for undoing 3029970275
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 16:35:32 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20181010203531.GA12949@sigill.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20181010192732.13918-1-avarab@gmail.com>

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 07:27:32PM +0000, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> Add an --auto-exit-code variable and a corresponding 'gc.autoExitCode'
> configuration option to optionally bring back the 'git gc --auto' exit
> code behavior as it existed between 2.6.3..2.19.0 (inclusive).
> 
> This was changed in 3029970275 ("gc: do not return error for prior
> errors in daemonized mode", 2018-07-16). The motivation for that patch
> was to appease 3rd party tools whose treatment of the 'git gc --auto'
> exit code is different from that of git core where it has always been
> ignored.

OK. I wouldn't want to use this myself, but I think you've made clear
why you find it useful. So I don't mind making it an optional behavior
(and it probably beats you trying to poke at the logfile yourself).

I'm not sure if the config is going to actually help that much, though.
The callers within Git will generally ignore the exit code anyway. So
for those cases, setting it will at best do nothing, and at worst it may
confuse the few stragglers (e.g., the git-svn one under recent
discussion).

Callers who _are_ prepared to act on the exit code probably ought to
just use --auto-exit-code in their invocation.

That said, I'm not entirely opposed to the matching config. There's
enough history here that somebody might want a sledgehammer setting to
go back to the old behavior.

-Peff