RE: Git question rewarding git merge and its exit codes

[<rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

On Monday, June 26, 2023 8:15 AM, Iván Expósito wrote:
>Recently, we have been working on some automations for Git, especially auto-
>merging some branches. Just noticed that when using: git merge --commit --no-ff -m
>"test message", and no changes are needed, git returns  "Already up-to-date" with
>exit code 0. Is this correct? Git hasn't done anything, so not sure how correct is to
>return 0 for success when nothing has been done. We have here a problem because
>the only way we can detect if a commit has been made or not is to check the return
>text, which is not the best idea for future-proof, or changes in the return text.
>
>Is this exit code as defined, or maybe is something we would need to look into for
>future improvements? Is there any other alternatives to detect what has happened,
>not comparing the standard output text?

If you want to script this, use --no-commit instead of --commit. After the merge runs, use git status --porcelain to determine whether merge performed any actions involving staging to unstaged (conflicts) files. This removes the need to use the completion code.

--Randall

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