[joeyh]

Configure your shell to report nonzero exit statuses.

  joey@gnu:~>true
  joey@gnu:~>false
  zsh: exit 1

In zsh this is done by "setopt print_exit_value". It's a pity shells don't do it by default.

[njharman]

Good hint, but it's value is very niche. Waiting until exit for status is fail. Many commands take seconds if not minutes/hours to complete. I wanna see some indication that they are working and not hung/etc.