Re: [PATCH] git-clone: better error message if curl program is missing

Gerrit Pape [off-list ref] writes:

If the curl program is not available, and git clone is started to clone a
repository through http, this is the output

 Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/puppet/.git/
 /usr/bin/git-clone: line 37: curl: command not found

Perhaps we should die at this point so that...

 Cannot get remote repository information.
 Perhaps git-update-server-info needs to be run there?

the user does not have to see this.

In other words, instead of this:

 http_fetch () {
 	# $1 = Remote, $2 = Local
+	type curl >/dev/null 2>&1 ||
+	    die "The curl program is not available"
 	curl -nsfL $curl_extra_args "$1" >"$2"
 }

something like this, perhaps:

	http_fetch () {
        	# $1 = remote, $2 = local
               	curl -nsfL $curl_extra_args "$1" >"$2" || exit
	}

Then the shell would say "curl: command not found" and we would
stop.

I am just hestating to use "type" there (yeah, I know mergetool
has one but that one is not as close to the core of the workflow
as git-fetch is).

BTW, isn't it a packaging bug not to depend git-fetch on curl?