pip search should set and return a userful shell status code

[vbabiy]

Currently, pip search exits with the status code 0 under all non-error conditions (as does most of pip itself I'd guess). But this is not very useful for e.g. testing if pip found a result.

It would be nice if pip search returned non-zero in case it does not find anything, so it can be used in sh scripts or lines.

---

• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/ianb/pip/issue/214
• Originally Reported By:
• Originally Created At: 2011-02-17 10:38:40

[vbabiy]

I like the idea. One downside is that pip has to maintain a list of error
codes.

Example:

0  = 1 or more matches found

1  = Error, could not complete search request

23 = No matches found

+1

---

Original Comment By: Kelsey Hightower

[vbabiy]

• Changed status from new to open.

---

Original Comment By: Carl Meyer

[KushalP]

There's actually a list of errno symbols here: http://docs.python.org/library/errno.html

Does a standard exit code system currently exist for pip?

[KushalP]

This is from the discussion in #pip on freenode:

• Have SearchCommand raise a specific exception type, like SearchCommandError. This can be passed up to CommandError
• The actual status code tests should occur on CommandError

[hltbra]

By now we have zero (no exit status code specified at commands.search.run) for success and not found. I agree no matches should not exit 0, but I don't know what status code we should use.

Let me write a small patch.

[pnasrat]

@hugobr I thought I saw a pull request to add CommandError, etc.

[pnasrat]

Ah ok was merged

6f77168

[hltbra]

Sorry for taking so long to implement this and merge. It is done as follows:

SUCCESS = 0
ERROR = 1
UNKNOWN_ERROR = 2
VIRTUALENV_NOT_FOUND = 3
NO_MATCHES_FOUND = 23

There are places where exit status are hard coded and not imported from pip/status_codes.py.