Re: [PATCH] git help -w should not create nohup.out

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

Hi,

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

quoted

git-help--browse uses 'nohup' to launch some browsers.

Why?

"nohup" should be used to start a program that should persist even after 
you logged out.  I fail to see how this should be sensible for "git help 
-w".  So "off with the head", uh, do away with the "nohup", I say!

True.  Christian, what was the reason you added nohup?
I would imagine if you did this:

	(1) open a new xterm;

        (2) in that xterm, run the browser, perhaps from
            git-help--browse, but without nohup, in the
            background;

	(3) exit the terminal

then the browser might get upset, losing its controlling
terminal.

But I suspect that would be a really broken behaviour.

Le vendredi 8 février 2008, Junio C Hamano a écrit :

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Hi,

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

quoted

git-help--browse uses 'nohup' to launch some browsers.

Why?

"nohup" should be used to start a program that should persist even
after you logged out.  I fail to see how this should be sensible for
"git help -w".  So "off with the head", uh, do away with the "nohup", I
say!

True.  Christian, what was the reason you added nohup?

I think I was worried about something like this:

1) ssh -Y other_machine
2) git help -w, it opens my browser
3) open many other tabs in the browser
4) exit other_machine, oops my browser with all my tabs is gone

or

1) open my favorite browser and many tabs in it
2) ssh -Y other_machine
3) git help -w, cool it opens a tab in my already opened browser in 1)
4) exit other_machine, oops my browser with all my tabs is gone

I thought it would perhaps help, and it was better to be on the safe side. 
But I just tested a little and it seems it doesn't change anything.

Also there are some browser that are very verbose on the SDTOUT or STDERR 
(especially konqueror) and I thought the nohup would also help move the 
output out of the command line while not discarding it in case it's needed. 
But I agree that it's not very often usefull and anyway there are better 
ways to deal with it.

So no problem to do away with the "nohup".

Thanks,
Christian.

On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 07:40:21PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Hi,

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

quoted

git-help--browse uses 'nohup' to launch some browsers.

Why?

"nohup" should be used to start a program that should persist even after 
you logged out.  I fail to see how this should be sensible for "git help 
-w".  So "off with the head", uh, do away with the "nohup", I say!

True.  Christian, what was the reason you added nohup?
I would imagine if you did this:

	(1) open a new xterm;

        (2) in that xterm, run the browser, perhaps from
            git-help--browse, but without nohup, in the
            background;

	(3) exit the terminal

then the browser might get upset, losing its controlling
terminal.

I also thought so, therefore, I suggested to redict the output to
/dev/null instead of removing "nohup", but now after some testing,
it seems there is no need for "nohup" here. So, unless Christian
has a good reason for "nohup", I agree with Johannes that "nohup"
should be removed.


Dmitry

On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 06:37:03AM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:

I think I was worried about something like this:

1) ssh -Y other_machine
2) git help -w, it opens my browser
3) open many other tabs in the browser
4) exit other_machine, oops my browser with all my tabs is gone

It seems to me that the browser will be killed anyway if ssh connection
is closed. At least, that what happened when I used ssh -Y localhost. In
fact, "nohup" made only easier to kill the browser in this way:
ssh -Y localhost
git help -w
exit
CTRL-C

Without "nohup" CTRL-C had no effect, but when I started the browser
with nohup then the connection would be closed and the browser killed.


Dmitry

There is no good reason to run GUI browsers using "nohup". It does not
solve any real problem but creates annoying "nohup.out" files in every
directory where git help -w is run.

This patch removes "nohup" from git-help--browse.sh

Signed-off-by: Dmitry Potapov <redacted>
---
It seems that everyone is agree that there is no good reason to
keep "nohup" in git-help--browse. So here is the patch.

 git-help--browse.sh |    6 +++---
 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/git-help--browse.sh b/git-help--browse.sh
index 10b0a36..adc4d37 100755
--- a/git-help--browse.sh
+++ b/git-help--browse.sh

@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ case "$browser" in
 	vers=$(expr "$($browser_path -version)" : '.* \([0-9][0-9]*\)\..*')
 	NEWTAB='-new-tab'
 	test "$vers" -lt 2 && NEWTAB=''
-	nohup "$browser_path" $NEWTAB $pages &
+	"$browser_path" $NEWTAB $pages &
 	;;
     konqueror)
 	case "$(basename "$browser_path")" in

@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ case "$browser" in
 		eval "$browser_path" newTab $pages
 		;;
 	    *)
-	        nohup "$browser_path" $pages &
+	        "$browser_path" $pages &
 		;;
 	esac
 	;;

@@ -144,6 +144,6 @@ case "$browser" in
 	eval "$browser_path" $pages
 	;;
     dillo)
-	nohup "$browser_path" $pages &
+	"$browser_path" $pages &
 	;;
 esac

-- 
1.5.4

Le vendredi 8 février 2008, Dmitry Potapov a écrit :

There is no good reason to run GUI browsers using "nohup". It does not
solve any real problem but creates annoying "nohup.out" files in every
directory where git help -w is run.

That's right, but if you just remove "nohup", then there may be some 
annoying browser output on the terminal. Perhaps we should also redirect 
stderr and stdout to /dev/null.

This patch removes "nohup" from git-help--browse.sh

"git-help--browse.sh" has been renamed "git-web--browse.sh" in next so we 
need a similar patch for next.

Thanks,
Christian. 

On Sat, Feb 09, 2008 at 06:53:43AM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:

Le vendredi 8 février 2008, Dmitry Potapov a écrit :

quoted

There is no good reason to run GUI browsers using "nohup". It does not
solve any real problem but creates annoying "nohup.out" files in every
directory where git help -w is run.

That's right, but if you just remove "nohup", then there may be some 
annoying browser output on the terminal. Perhaps we should also redirect 
stderr and stdout to /dev/null.

I don't mind this redirection, but I am not sure whether it is the right
thing to do, because it may hide relevant error information, and if your
browser tends to print irrelevant and annoying messages at start, then
perhaps the script to start this browser should be corrected to suppress
these output.

So, I want to hear what other people think. If there is no objection,
I will add this redirection.

quoted

This patch removes "nohup" from git-help--browse.sh

"git-help--browse.sh" has been renamed "git-web--browse.sh" in next so we 
need a similar patch for next.

Okay, I will base my patch on next.


Dmitry