Re: [PATCH] demonstrate git-commit --dry-run exit code behaviour

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 12:21:13PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > In particular, show that --short and --porcelain, while implying
> > --dry-run, do not return the same exit code as --dry-run. This is due to
> > the wt_status.commitable flag being set only when a long status is
> > requested.
> 
> I am not sure if --short/--porcelain should even be accepted by "git
> commit" in the first place.  It used to be that "git status" and
> "git commit" were the same program in a different guise and "git
> status <anything>" were merely a "git commit --dry-run <anything>",
> but the recent push is in the direction of making them totally
> separate in the end-user's minds.  So if we want a proper fix, I
> would actually think that these options should *error out* at the
> command line parser level, way before checking if there is anything
> to commit.

I do not think they are any less useful than "git commit --dry-run" in
the first place. If you want to ask "what would happen if I ran commit
with these arguments", you can get the answer in any of several formats
(and --porcelain is the only machine-readable one).

I have never found "commit --dry-run" to be useful, but I assumed that
somebody does.

-Peff