Re: [PATCH] Make stashing nothing exit 1

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

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Hi Eric,

On Sat, 23 Mar 2019, Eric Sunshine wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 3:54 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
> <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 23 2019, Keith Smiley wrote:
> > > In the case there are no files to stash, but the user asked to stash, we
> > > should exit 1 since the stashing failed.
> > > ---
> > > diff --git a/git-stash.sh b/git-stash.sh
> > > @@ -318,7 +318,7 @@ push_stash () {
> > >       if no_changes "$@"
> > >       then
> > >               say "$(gettext "No local changes to save")"
> > > -             exit 0
> > > +             exit 1
> > >       fi
> >
> >  * Shouldn't we do this consistently across all the other sub-commands?
> >    Trying some of them seems 'push' may be the odd one out, but maybe
> >    I've missed some (and this would/should be covered by
> >    tests). I.e. some single test that does a bunch of ops with no
> >    entries / nothing to stash and asserts exit codes.
>
> A bigger question is why is this change desirable?

Indeed. When I run `git stash`, my intention is to make sure that I can
get back whatever edits I had made, but right now, I want a clean
worktree.

So for me, `git stash` does *the exact right thing*.

I could see, however, that other users might think that it is more like a
"uh oh, I have modifications that I do not want to commit right now!
Please, Git, put all my local changes into a stash", and when there are
not even any changes to stash, they want the command to fail.

However, I think that this is not only a change in behavior, but probably
a minor use case compared to what I feel *my* use case is ;-)

As such, the new behavior should be hidden behind an option (say,
`--fail-if-clean`).

> What is the justification for turning this into an error and possibly
> breaking existing automation scripts? Arguing that this case should be
> an "error" is difficult considering that there are many other commands
> (inside and outside of Git) which exit with 0 when they have nothing to
> do. I can't find the message in the archive right now, but I recall a
> few months ago Junio shooting down an analogous change to some other
> command, so the justification needs to be a strong one.

Indeed, the commit message should make a case for the change. Otherwise,
it will be less convincing...

Ciao,
Johannes

>
> Also, your Signed-off-by: is missing. See
> Documentation/SubmittingPatches.  Thanks.
>