For batch commands like fromkey and setpresentkey, when some operations in a batch succeed and others fail, it's hard to know which ones were done. It would be good if the operations had an option to output the status to stdout or to a file, maybe in json format. It would also be good if there was a --keep-going option to try each operation even if some early ones fail. Currently, when some operations fail, the set of doable operations that gets done depends on the input order, and there is no reliable way to know which ones succeeded.
Many commands do have an interface that works like that. For example
git annex get --batch --jsonhas json output and does not stop when a get fails.So this comes down to specific behaviors of specific commands. I've added --json to fromkey.
I don't think that setpresentkey can fail, unless there's a disk IO error or something?
Any others?
Failure is always an option
but if the failure is due to disk IO error
or disk full or memory error or whatever, it doesn't much matter which
particular item in the batch caused the error because you're going to want
to redo from start anyway.
I'll close this, if you find other commands whose batch interface can be improved open more todos.