merge-file: clamp exit code to maximum 127

Git-merge-file is documented to return one of three exit
codes:

  - zero means the merge was successful

  - a negative number means an error occurred

  - a positive number indicates the number of conflicts

Unfortunately, this all gets stuffed into an 8-bit return
code. Which means that if you have 256 conflicts, this wraps
to zero, and the merge appears to succeed (and commits a
blob full of conflict-marker cruft!).

This patch clamps the return value to a maximum of 127,
which we should be able to safely represent everywhere. This
also leaves 128-255 for other values. Shells (and some parts
of git) will typically represent signal death as 128 plus
the signal number. And negative values are typically coerced
to an 8-bit unsigned value (so "return -1" ends up as 255).

Technically negative returns have the same problem (e.g.,
"-256" wraps back to 0), but this is not a problem in
practice, as the only negative value we use is "-1".

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/builtin/merge-file.c b/builtin/merge-file.c
index 844f84f40b..ab4330a3d0 100644
--- a/builtin/merge-file.c
+++ b/builtin/merge-file.c
@@ -102,5 +102,8 @@ int cmd_merge_file(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 		free(result.ptr);
 	}
 
+	if (ret > 127)
+		ret = 127;
+
 	return ret;
 }