Ubuntu – How to get git producing output to a file

bashcommand linegitoutputstdout

I wanted to write the output of git clone to a file using

git clone https://github.com/someRepository > git_clone.file

But instead I get the output displayed/updated in the terminal like

Cloning to 'someRepository' ...
remote: Counting objects: 2618, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Total 2618 (delta 2), reused 12 (delta 1), pack-reused 2603
Received objects: 100% (2618/2618), 258.95 MiB | 4.39 MiB/s, Done.
Resolving Differences auf: 100% (1058/1058), Done.
Check Connectivity ... Done.

But the file git_clone.file is generated but remains empty.

My original goal was to bypass the output of git into a function (see my question here). But now I realized git doesn't even seem to produce the output to stdout really but somehow different since nothing is written to the file.

How can I get this displayed output from git in order to redirect it to a file/function?

EDIT

The proposed redirection of stderr (and stdout) did not solve the problem.

git clone https://github.com/someRepository 2> git_clone.file
git clone https://github.com/someRepository &> git_clone.file
git clone https://github.com/someRepository > git_clone.file > 2>&1

all gave me the same result: only the line

Cloning to 'someRepository' ...

appears in git_clone.file

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Why do I need this?

As explained in my other question here I wrote a custom progress bar always at the bottom of the output my scripts. (I use it in multible scripts but) The script in this case migrates a lot of (until now 107) git repositories from github to our own Gitlab-Server and repairs the Git LFS support which usually is lost without it.

So I would like to still see all the output of git but also would like to have my progress bar working at the bottom of the output in the terminal.

Best Answer

Thanks for your help!

I just have found the solution:

Part 1

(Thanks to the answer of dessert)
git by design does never write to stdout but stderr. So I needed to redirect stderr, too, in order to get the output using

git clone XYZ &> git_clone.file

Part 2

Anyway this wasn't enough and I only received the "uninteresting" part of the output to the file but not the lines of the progress I really wanted.

Doing further reserach again in man git-clone I realized there exists an option

--progress
        progress status is reported on the standard error stream by 
        default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q is 
        specified. This flag forces progress status even if the standard 
        error stream is not directed to a terminal.

Though I'ld think it actually was already attached to a terminal, this now seems to force git to write the lines of the progress part I'm most interested in finally to stderr as well so I can now get them using

git clone --progress XYZ &> git_clone.file

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – bash shell output history file location

Bash only stores history of the commands you ran (which you can retrieve by typing history). Unless you already have set the scroll-back to a very high number, there is no way to see the outputs that are older than the set value of scroll-back. Also setting this value to a very high number will make your scrolling sluggish since the lines are stored in the memory.

To store your future commands and their outputs, there are few options:

Using screen

Start a screen session by entering screen. Once you are inside screen, press Ctrl-a, then :, then enter log. All the I/O will be captured in screenlog files in the directory where you started the screen command.

Using script

You can start by typing script. A script session will start that will capture all the I/O to a file named typescript. You can exit the script session by Ctrl-d and view the logs in the typescript file.

Using tee

tee is a handy tool. You can do something like this:

$ bash | tee log.txt

This will open a new bash shell inside the one you are already running. When you exit out of this, you can see the outputs in the file called log.txt

Other ways

As Dustin Kirkland suggested in this post, you can also use byobu. Although, I have never used, terminal screencasting tools such as Shelr also sounds like an option.

Best Answer

Part 1

Part 2

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Ubuntu – bash shell output history file location

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