The concrete poor error message is this:

$ pijul clone robx@nest.pijul.com/doesnt/exist x
Error: Remote exited with status 1
$ pijul clone robx@nest.pijul.com:/pijul/pijul x
Error: Remote exited with status 1

(The second case is part of the reason for my ssh trouble – I was used to git/scp-style addresses which have that colon in there.)

I think it would be desirable to generally report more details about what went wrong with remote pijul (though I imagine there might be some security questions here). Otherwise, it’d be great if this particular case were handled in a way which points at the actual problem.

You’re totally correct. I push a massive change to the SSH client today, to use it in a more asynchronous way (with an asynchronous handler instead of waiting asynchronously for messages). This is a big refactoring, and it opens the way to a common handling of error messages and exit codes.

I’m keeping this discussion open because errors aren’t printed yet, and the Nest still sends poor error messages.

Just tested, it works now. Thanks for your report and suggestions.