cargo search return non-zero exit code when no results found

[leighmcculloch]

Problem

Using cargo search in scripts is difficult because if it doesn't find any results it doesn't return a non-zero exit code.

Proposed Solution

Return a non-zero exit code when the search yields no results.

Notes

No response

[epage]

In what ways are you using cargo search in scripts? We don't provide a programmatic output mode for it, so it seems that either the value for using it in scripting is limited or its very brittle. By improving the scripting experience, I worry we send the wrong message about our compatibility on the text output.

[leighmcculloch]

I'm using the output to check if a prior publish finalized.

Although I've also discovered the cargo add command can be used in the same way and it will return a non-zero exit code if the version of the crate cannot be found.

[epage]

Some tools, like cargo-release, have support for that built-in.

You can also use the crate crates_index to look information up.

We are also looking at dedicated plumbing for the registry, see #11034

I lean towards closing this issue as the driving use case for using cargo search is is unreliable (considering we can return results from other crates) and there are other options.

[epage]

I should add that we also have #9507 where we want to add our own polling directly into cargo.