patch for compare.py - exit code about rdiff-backup

[davekempe]

congrats on issue #1. Wes will review it and likely apply it once we have the tree worked out. It could be time for a bit of a re-org first.

[anomaly256]

I agree that return code values used for an error condition should have specific error condition meaning. This is convention almost everywhere else. Obviously some consumers of rdiff-backup will need to be updated to account for such a functionality change though. Unless someone can give a compelling argument against this we will consider it. (If it proves too polarizing we can consider an 'enable old behavior' command line argument or similar.)

Let me familiarize myself with the code base first. It might warrant some re-architecting to raise exceptions for error conditions instead

[szpak]

As the code is now hosted on GitHub it may be probably a good idea to switch to pull request based collaboration model (instead of patches).

[davekempe]

Agreed szpak, but we will take either for now. There are a bunch of patches people have come up with that need merging anyway.

[ottok]

Hello @dominicraf !

The code base has been rewritten for Python 3 and there will be no further releases for the 1.x series in Python 2 anymore. Could you please help out and test again with the latest development version (https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup#installing-the-latest-development-version) if you can still reproduce this?

With your help, the upcoming 2.0.0 release could be improved and this reported issue eventually solved in future 2.x releases.

[ericzolf]

This is a bigger change which is necessary: not only Verify does return the number of failures as return code, also all the Compare functions do this. This said, I fully agree that it isn't best practice and requires a fix. It'll be done as part of milestone 2.2.0.

Some details of what needs to be done:

• modify all def Compare* functions and the def Verify function in compare.py
• make sure they return a fixed value (2 is fine with me, to make the difference with 1 for true errors) instead of the number of files
• make sure they output in failure case a message of level 1 stating how many files didn't pass the comparison/verification (if rdiff-backup returns an error code, there must be an error message).

I mark the bug as beginner as someone new can do it.

[ericzolf]

Closing as this has been addressed by #343 after more than 4 years!
@dominicraf thanks for your patience. And congratulation on closing yourself with your PR your own issue #1