Man pages lack of exit status information

Man pages lack of exit status information

[Francis Moreau]

Hello,

I checked on a couple of git commands' man pages and I couldn't find
the exit status of these commands.

For example: git-status, git-diff man pages don't tell anything.

Am I missing something ?

Thanks
-- 
Francis

Re: Man pages lack of exit status information

[Wincent Colaiuta]

El 17/4/2008, a las 9:45, Francis Moreau escribió:
> Hello,
>
> I checked on a couple of git commands' man pages and I couldn't find
> the exit status of these commands.
>
> For example: git-status, git-diff man pages don't tell anything.
>
> Am I missing something ?

The "git-diff" man page documents this under the --exit-code option.  
It probably would be nice to have an "EXIT STATUS" section added to  
the man pages of those commands for which it would be interesting  
(like "git-diff") and perhaps to the main "git" man page as well (with  
general info).

If there is interest in this I'll whip up a doc patch.

Cheers,
Wincent

Re: Man pages lack of exit status information

[Francis Moreau]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com> wrote:
> El 17/4/2008, a las 9:45, Francis Moreau escribió:
> > I checked on a couple of git commands' man pages and I couldn't find
> > the exit status of these commands.
> >
> > For example: git-status, git-diff man pages don't tell anything.
> >
> > Am I missing something ?
> >
>
>  The "git-diff" man page documents this under the --exit-code option. It
> probably would be nice to have an "EXIT STATUS" section added to the man
> pages of those commands for which it would be interesting (like "git-diff")
> and perhaps to the main "git" man page as well (with general info).
>
>  If there is interest in this I'll whip up a doc patch.
>

I think it makes sense to have such section specially since git plumbings are
also designed to be used in higher level scripts.

I really use to searching for RETURN VALUE section in man pages when I need
what a command returns. And it's a pain to have to read the whole man page for
finding such important information.

Thanks
-- 
Francis

Re: Man pages lack of exit status information

[David Mansfield]

On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 10:38 +0200, Francis Moreau wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com> wrote:
> > El 17/4/2008, a las 9:45, Francis Moreau escribió:
> > > I checked on a couple of git commands' man pages and I couldn't find
> > > the exit status of these commands.
> > >
> > > For example: git-status, git-diff man pages don't tell anything.
> > >
> > > Am I missing something ?
> > >
> >
> >  The "git-diff" man page documents this under the --exit-code option. It
> > probably would be nice to have an "EXIT STATUS" section added to the man
> > pages of those commands for which it would be interesting (like "git-diff")
> > and perhaps to the main "git" man page as well (with general info).
> >
> >  If there is interest in this I'll whip up a doc patch.
> >
> 
> I think it makes sense to have such section specially since git plumbings are
> also designed to be used in higher level scripts.
> 
> I really use to searching for RETURN VALUE section in man pages when I need
> what a command returns. And it's a pain to have to read the whole man page for
> finding such important information.
> 

+1 for adding a RETURN VALUE section to the docs.

Yes, please!  We need this.  I got burned because git-status does
something which is non-intuitive, and just yesterday I was asking about
git-merge, which I can only assume returns (exits) with 1 if there was a
conflict.

David