pack-protocol.txt: accept error packets in any context

In the Git pack protocol definition, an error packet may appear only in
a certain context. However, servers can face a runtime error (e.g. I/O
error) at an arbitrary timing. This patch changes the protocol to allow
an error packet to be sent instead of any packet.

Without this protocol spec change, when a server cannot process a
request, there's no way to tell that to a client. Since the server
cannot produce a valid response, it would be forced to cut a connection
without telling why. With this protocol spec change, the server can be
more gentle in this situation. An old client may see these error packets
as an unexpected packet, but this is not worse than having an unexpected
EOF.

Following this protocol spec change, the error packet handling code is
moved to pkt-line.c. Implementation wise, this implementation uses
pkt-line to communicate with a subprocess. Since this is not a part of
Git protocol, it's possible that a packet that is not supposed to be an
error packet is mistakenly parsed as an error packet. This error packet
handling is enabled only for the Git pack protocol parsing code
considering this.

Signed-off-by: Masaya Suzuki <masayasuzuki@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/pkt-line.h b/pkt-line.h
index 5b28d43..d7e1dbc 100644
--- a/pkt-line.h
+++ b/pkt-line.h
@@ -62,9 +62,13 @@ int write_packetized_from_buf(const char *src_in, size_t len, int fd_out);
  *
  * If options contains PACKET_READ_CHOMP_NEWLINE, a trailing newline (if
  * present) is removed from the buffer before returning.
+ *
+ * If options contains PACKET_READ_DIE_ON_ERR_PACKET, it dies when it sees an
+ * ERR packet.
  */
-#define PACKET_READ_GENTLE_ON_EOF (1u<<0)
-#define PACKET_READ_CHOMP_NEWLINE (1u<<1)
+#define PACKET_READ_GENTLE_ON_EOF     (1u<<0)
+#define PACKET_READ_CHOMP_NEWLINE     (1u<<1)
+#define PACKET_READ_DIE_ON_ERR_PACKET (1u<<2)
 int packet_read(int fd, char **src_buffer, size_t *src_len, char
 		*buffer, unsigned size, int options);