I use essentially this, but I think this post is over 10 years old (needs a date), and it's now INCOMPLETE.

bash introduced an option to respect rather than ignore errors within command sub processes years ago. So if you want to be safer, do something like:

    #!/bin/bash
    set -euo pipefail
    shopt -s inherit_errexit 

That works as-is in OSH, which is part of https://oils.pub/

(edit: the last time this came up was a year ago, and here's a more concrete example - https://lobste.rs/s/1wohaz/posix_2024_changes#c_9oo1av )

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But that's STILL incomplete because POSIX mandates that errors be LOST. That is, it mandates broken error handling.

For example, there what I call the "if myfunc" pitfall

    set -e

    my-deploy-func  # errors respected

    if ! my-deploy-func; then   # errors lost
      echo failed
    fi
    my-deploy-func || echo fail  # errors lost

But even if you fix that, it's still not enough.

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I describe all the problems in this doc, e.g. waiting for process subs:

YSH Fixes Shell's Error Handling (errexit) - https://oils.pub/release/latest/doc/error-handling.html

Summary: YSH fixes all shell error handling issues. This was surprisingly hard and required many iterations, but it has stood up to scrutiny.

For contrast, here is a recent attempt at fixing bash, which is also incomplete, and I argue is a horrible language design: https://lobste.rs/s/kidktn/bash_patch_add_shopt_for_implicit...