Re: [PATCH 1/2] t/test-lib.sh: support Korn shell by converting GIT_EXIT_OK to GIT_EXIT_CODE

From: Ben Walton <bwalton@artsci.utoronto.ca>
Date: Oct 10, 2009, 12:53 UTC
Message-ID: <1255178966-sup-5813@ntdws12.chass.utoronto.ca>
In-Reply-To: <m2eipbphbr.fsf@igel.home>

Excerpts from Andreas Schwab's message of Sat Oct 10 08:24:40 -0400 2009:

> According to the autoconf docs this bug is also present in the Solaris
> /bin/sh (and autoconf generated scripts use some elaborated workaround).

Solaris' /bin/sh shouldn't be used for anything but forking a decent shell, imo. It was brought to my attention recently that the test suite for mercurial on solaris was failing the git tests. The mercurial folks initially thought this was a git on solaris bug.

After looking into it, I discovered that ^ is still treated[1] as a pipe symbol[2] in some cases. So, test suite programs run under /bin/sh on solaris with commands like `git reset --hard HEAD^` were misbehaving due to the shell setting up a pipeline under the right circumstances.

-Ben

[1] http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/cmd/sh/cmd.c
    line 184

[2] This dates back to the Thomson shell:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_shell

-- 
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
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