Re: [PATCH v2] hook: introduce the report hook for git-receive-pack(1)

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

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 03:34:58PM +0200, Karthik Nayak wrote:
> [snip]
>> - Exit 0: the hook's stdout is used as the report. The hook can
>>   rewrite 'ok' lines to 'ng' lines to signal per-ref rejection to the
>>   client while receive-pack itself exits cleanly. The client marks
>>   rejected refs as '[remote rejected]' and exits with a non-zero
>>   status if any ref is 'ng'.
>> 
>> - Non-zero exit: the hook's stdout is discarded, receive-pack calls
>>   die(), and no report is sent to the client at all. The client
>>   observes a sideband disconnect and reports 'the remote end hung up
>>   unexpectedly', treating the entire push as failed.
>
> I was thinking about this case a bit more. Should we maybe handle it
> similarly to the pre-receive hook instead of dieing? If that hook fails
> we basically update all references to "pre-receive hook declined",
> whereas we could update all of them to "report hook failed". That might
> make for a better user experience.

It is a bit different in that pre-receive is all-or-nothing, but I
agree that it makes sense to model a failure case after how it
works.  In general, it helps to explicitly tell the other end that
their action was declined than let them assume that no news is a bad
news.

I also agree with other points in your review, but I consider the
above is the most valuable input ;-).

Thanks.