[BUG] test_must_fail: does not correctly detect failures - Was Git 2.16.0-rc2 Test Summary on NonStop

From: Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
Date: Jan 13, 2018, 20:16 UTC
Message-ID: <004a01d38cab$705262a0$50f727e0$@nexbridge.com>

On January 13, 2018 2:31 PM, I wrote:

Show 31 quoted lines

> On January 13, 2018 1:08 PM, I wrote:
> > Heres where things are. This is probably the best git release so far
> (ever).
> > After applying a4cdf02, I had 6 total breakages. 3 existing, 3 new.
> > Many reduced. The test took about 24 hours to run on platform, which
> > is about 2 hours shorter than 2.13.5.
> >
> > t1308-config-set.sh (2 already discussed and expecting a fix, both
> > appear
> to
> > be issues in the test script, not code) t1404-update-ref-errors.sh #
> > 52  reported but not discussed:
> >    not ok 52 - delete fails cleanly if packed-refs file is locked.
> >      The lock detection worked, but the test assumed the detection
> > would occur in a different spot.
> > t9001-send-email.sh (2 have existed for 2 years. 1 is new. We have not
> used
> > send-email on platform to this point).
> >    not ok 31 - reject long lines
> >      This is a new fail since 2.8.5
> >   not ok 106 - sendemail.transferencoding=7bit fails on 8bit data
> >      Still to be investigated. This may be a tooling issue on Platform.
> >   not ok 107 - --transfer-encoding overrides
> > sendemail.transferEncoding
> >      Still to be investigated. This may be a tooling issue on Platform.
> 
> I missed one:
> not ok 134 - --dump-aliases must be used alone #
> #               test_must_fail git send-email --dump-aliases
> --to=janice@example
> .com -1 refs/heads/accounting

Running the tests in debug, I found that they all (1308, 1404, 9001) use test_must_fail, and hit similar situations:

expecting success:
        test_must_fail git send-email --dump-aliases --to=janice@example.com
-1 refs/heads/accounting
--dump-aliases incompatible with other options
test_must_fail: died by signal 34: git send-email --dump-aliases
--to=janice@example.com -1 refs/heads/accounting
not ok 134 - --dump-aliases must be used alone
#
#               test_must_fail git send-email --dump-aliases
--to=janice@example.com -1 refs/heads/accounting
#

It is looking like git is doing what it is supposed to be doing, but the test scripts are not detecting failures properly. The test_must_fail routine is interestingly used in all of the above test cases that are failing. The actual exit_code reported by git was 162, (a.k.a. signal 34 - which is not thrown on the platform. The max signal is 31 (SIGABEND). test_must_fail has a weird combination of some errors pass and others don't, but I can't correlate the intent of its use in these tests particularly with no acceptable signals passed in. Adding a return 1 if 162 caused other tests to fail as well, so that's not the fix.

Any clues? Thanks, Randall