Instead of dying there, let the caller high up in the callchain notice the error and handle it (by dying, still). The eventual caller of do_pick_commit() is sequencer_pick_revisions(), which already relays a reported error from its helper functions (including this one), and both of its two callers know how to react to a negative return correctly. So this makes do_pick_commit() callable from new callers that want it not to die, without changing the external behaviour of anything existing. Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@xxxxxx> --- sequencer.c | 14 ++++++++------ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/sequencer.c b/sequencer.c index 76b1c52..baf6b40 100644 --- a/sequencer.c +++ b/sequencer.c @@ -585,12 +585,14 @@ static int do_pick_commit(struct commit *commit, struct replay_opts *opts) * However, if the merge did not even start, then we don't want to * write it at all. */ - if (opts->action == REPLAY_PICK && !opts->no_commit && (res == 0 || res == 1)) - update_ref(NULL, "CHERRY_PICK_HEAD", commit->object.oid.hash, NULL, - REF_NODEREF, UPDATE_REFS_DIE_ON_ERR); - if (opts->action == REPLAY_REVERT && ((opts->no_commit && res == 0) || res == 1)) - update_ref(NULL, "REVERT_HEAD", commit->object.oid.hash, NULL, - REF_NODEREF, UPDATE_REFS_DIE_ON_ERR); + if (opts->action == REPLAY_PICK && !opts->no_commit && (res == 0 || res == 1) && + update_ref(NULL, "CHERRY_PICK_HEAD", commit->object.oid.hash, NULL, + REF_NODEREF, UPDATE_REFS_MSG_ON_ERR)) + res = -1; + if (opts->action == REPLAY_REVERT && ((opts->no_commit && res == 0) || res == 1) && + update_ref(NULL, "REVERT_HEAD", commit->object.oid.hash, NULL, + REF_NODEREF, UPDATE_REFS_MSG_ON_ERR)) + res = -1; if (res) { error(opts->action == REPLAY_REVERT -- 2.10.0.windows.1.10.g803177d