On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, Sep 08, 2011 at 11:12:48AM +0530, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:

quoted

quoted

But with a program whose main function is to perform an action, like
"git push", I think there are really two ways to look at it:

 1. There is no main output; any progress or status update is just
    diagnostic chat, and should go to stderr.

 2. The main output is the status report; it goes to stdout, and
    progress updates go to stderr.

I always thought if you write stuff to stdout the remote client gets
confused because it is executing to a defined protocol and suddenly
sees unexpected input in the middle.

Bit if *you* are saying this (output random stuff to STDOUT) can
happen if we want it to, clearly I was wrong...

For the remote side, yes, we have to be sure not to pollute stdout,
because that's where the protocol is going.. But the status table is
generated on the client side, so stdout is just connected to the user's
terminal there.

 aah ok, that makes sense; thanks.