Re: [PATCH] usage: try harder to format very long error messages

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> We use a fixed-size buffer of 4096 bytes to format die() and
> error() messages. We explicitly avoided using a strbuf or
> other fanciness here, because we want to make sure that we
> report the message even in the face of malloc() failure
> (after all, we might even be dying due to a malloc call).

Yes, that was the rationale behind the "we use a fixed-buffer and
try not to allocate in this codepath", I think.

> As for vwritef, it exists solely to work over write(), _and_ it doesn't
> get the "one-shot" thing right (which is probably OK, as we use it only
> when exec fails). But we could probably teach run-command to fdopen(),
> and get rid of it entirely (in favor of teaching vreportf to take a
> FILE* handle instead of assuming stderr).

Sounds like a plan ;-)

The patch looks very sensible.