notice error exit from pager

If the pager fails to run, git produces no output, e.g.: $ GIT_PAGER=not-a-command git log The error reporting fails for two reasons: (1) start_command: There is a mechanism that detects errors during execvp introduced in 2b541bf8 (start_command: detect execvp failures early). The child writes one byte to a pipe only if execvp fails. The parent waits for either EOF, when the successful execvp automatically closes the pipe (see FD_CLOEXEC in fcntl(1)), or it reads a single byte, in which case it knows that the execvp failed. This mechanism is incompatible with the workaround introduced in 35ce8622 (pager: Work around window resizing bug in 'less'), which waits for input from the parent before the exec. Since both the parent and the child are waiting for input from each other, that would result in a deadlock. In order to avoid that, the mechanism is disabled by closing the child_notifier file descriptor. (2) finish_command: The parent correctly detects the 127 exit status from the child, but the error output goes nowhere, since by that time it is already being redirected to the child. No simple solution for (1) comes to mind. Number (2) can be solved by not sending error output to the pager. Not redirecting error output to the pager can result in the pager overwriting error output with standard output, however. Since there is no reliable way to handle error reporting in the parent, produce the output in the child instead. Signed-off-by: Clemens Buchacher <drizzd@aon.at> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Clemens Buchacher committed Aug 1, 2011 at 19:59 UTC fc1b56f054a79400c4e72cb1aab97ba2605cbd83
1 file changed +6 -9
run-command.c
+6 -9
@@ -125,9 +125,6 @@ static int wait_or_whine(pid_t pid, const char *argv0, int silent_exec_failure)
125 if (code == 127) {
126 code = -1;
127 failed_errno = ENOENT;
128 - if (!silent_exec_failure)
129 - error("cannot run %s: %s", argv0,
130 - strerror(ENOENT));
128 }
129 } else {
130 error("waitpid is confused (%s)", argv0);
@@ -282,14 +279,14 @@ fail_pipe:
279 } else {
280 execvp(cmd->argv[0], (char *const*) cmd->argv);
281 }
285 - /*
286 - * Do not check for cmd->silent_exec_failure; the parent
287 - * process will check it when it sees this exit code.
288 - */
289 - if (errno == ENOENT)
282 + if (errno == ENOENT) {
283 + if (!cmd->silent_exec_failure)
284 + error("cannot run %s: %s", cmd->argv[0],
285 + strerror(ENOENT));
286 exit(127);
291 - else
287 + } else {
288 die_errno("cannot exec '%s'", cmd->argv[0]);
289 + }
290 }
291 if (cmd->pid < 0)
292 error("cannot fork() for %s: %s", cmd->argv[0],