Re: Q about git rev-parse {--is-inside-work-tree, --show-cdup}

On Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 01:25:36PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

1. Wouldn't it be useful, if "git rev-parse" (1) had an option "-q" that
simply indicates whether "--is-inside-work-tree" is true by means of the
return code? Actually it has an option "-q" but that doesn't work with
"--is-inside-work-tree".

That would break existing scripts that expect "-q" to squelch only the
error output, no?  I think the risk of breaking existing scripts that
other people wrote over time that you (and I) haven't seen outweighs any
benefit (i.e. "if test $(rev-parse...) = true" vs "if rev-parse...") you
are seeing here.

Right now "-q" doesn't do _anything_ for --is-inside-work-tree, AFAICT.
It is a useless no-op. So I don't know if we are breaking anybody. What
does somebody doing "git rev-parse -q --is-inside-work-tree" expect to
happen?

I don't see why they would expect it to suppress error output. Usually
"-q" is about "suppress non-essential output, but keep errors coming".
If you wanted to suppress errors, you would use "2>/dev/null".

That being said, in my original reply I only half-thought about Dirk's
problem, and considered more the number of times "git rev-parse -q" has
annoyed me in the past by doing nothing[1], and just assumed this was
another such case. It really isn't that hard to just check $(git
rev-parse) in this instance.

-Peff

[1] I wish I could remember my exact case. It's something that I
remember coming up no more than once every month or two, but that annoys
me every time, because it doesn't do what I expect.

-Peff