`change list` and `change history` print nothing without `--json`

[damusix]

Summary

In a non-interactive shell, noorm change list and noorm change history produce no output at all — no table, no "no changes found" message — and exit 0. Only --json returns data.

Repro

1. Apply a changeset so history is non-empty: noorm change run <name>
2. noorm change history; echo "exit=$?"
3. noorm change history --json

Expected

Step 2 prints the history, or an explicit empty-state message. Either way the caller can tell the difference between "no changesets" and "no output".

Actual

Step 2 prints nothing and exits 0. Step 3 returns the full array.

A CI step that greps the plain-text output for a changeset name reads success from silence — the same result it would get from an empty database.

Related: flag position is load-bearing and unsignalled

--json only works after the leaf subcommand:

noorm change history --json     # works
noorm change --json history     # silent, exit 0
noorm --json change history     # silent, exit 0

The two wrong forms fail the same way as the plain-text case — no output, no error, exit 0 — so a typo in flag placement is indistinguishable from an empty result.

Separately, structured log lines are emitted to stdout ahead of the JSON payload even in --json mode, so consumers have to tail -1 rather than piping stdout straight to a parser. Log output belongs on stderr.

Environment

• noorm CLI 0.0.0, core 1.0.0-alpha.39
• OS: macOS (darwin 25.5.0)
• Runtime: Node v24.13.0
• Dialect: mssql

Context

Found while verifying the changeset loop during a production schema migration. The tracked-migration history is the main reason we adopted noorm over a hand-rolled deploy script, so being unable to read it non-interactively was a blocker until --json was found.