Re: [PATCH v5 1/5] setup: add gentle version of read_gitfile

Jeff King wrote:

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 10:07:43PM +0200, erik elfström wrote:

quoted

Also if it turns out that we actually need to treat the "file too
large" error differently in clean (as discussed in thread on the file
size check) then we can no longer communicate that back using the
strbuf interface.

Yeah, agreed. This system breaks down as soon as you need to
programatically know which error happened.

On the contrary: it separates the information that is used
programatically and the information intended for the user.

The return value (or an int * parameter) distinguishes errors that
affect control flow.  A string can provide information for the user.

This way it is easy to tweak the information that the user sees in
one place, without changing control flow.