Re: thoughts on error passing, was Re: [PATCH 2/2] fsck: handle bad trees like other errors

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

>  	if (!dont_change_ref) {
>  		struct ref_transaction *transaction;
> -		struct strbuf err = STRBUF_INIT;
> -
> -		transaction = ref_transaction_begin(&err);
> -		if (!transaction ||
> -		    ref_transaction_update(transaction, ref.buf,
> -					   sha1, forcing ? NULL : null_sha1,
> -					   0, msg, &err) ||
> -		    ref_transaction_commit(transaction, &err))
> -			die("%s", err.buf);
> +
> +		transaction = ref_transaction_begin(&error_die);
> +		ref_transaction_update(transaction, ref.buf,
> +				       sha1, forcing ? NULL : null_sha1,
> +				       0, msg, &error_die);
> +		ref_transaction_commit(transaction, &error_die);
>  		ref_transaction_free(transaction);
> -		strbuf_release(&err);
>  	}
>  
>  	if (real_ref && track)
>
> which is much shorter and to the point (it does rely on the called
> functions always calling report_error() and never just returning NULL or
> "-1", but that should be the already. If it isn't, we'd be printing
> "fatal: " with no message).

Yes but... grepping for die() got a lot harder, which may not be a
good thing.

I do like the flexibility such a mechanism offers, but
wrapping/hiding die in it is probably an example that the
flexibility went a bit too far.