Subject: Re: [PATCH] cat-file --batch / --batch-check: do not exit if hashes are missing

From: Lea Wiemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:27:22 +0200

Jakub Narebski wrote:
> I think the (usual) solution is to add --ignore-missing and
> --no-ignore-missing (or --noignore-missing), add configuration
> option 'catfile.ignoreMissing', make ignore-missing default and
> deprecate it with some transition time...

*shrugs*  I'm not convinced that anyone would ever *not* want to use 
--ignore-missing, since programs that use --batch(-check) presumably 
query for a large batch of objects and therefore define their own error 
handling anyway.  Also, it's not like you could accidentally ignore the 
"<object> missing" output in your code since you're parsing the output 
anyway.  So I'm not sure what the point of changing the current behavior 
is.  (Perhaps add a --exit-on-missing option?  Not that I or anyone else 
has ever asked for that feature.)

In any case, can please someone review my patch?  I think my patch 
should be independent of these things (since it's a bug fix), and I'd 
hate to see it not make it into the code just because some people don't 
seem to like cat-file's behavior. ;-)  (I need it for the Perl API, 
after all.)

-- Lea