Re: [PATCH] t6024-recursive-merge.sh: hide spurious output when not running verbosely

> On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 03:50:03PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> > Actually, I think this might be a bit more sensible approach.
> > 
> > -- >8 --
> > tests: allow optional clean-up phrase to expect_success/failure
> > 
> > When one test modifies the state of the test repository that the later
> > tests may depend on, you may want to add a clean-up action that is run
> > regardless of the outcome of the main part of the test.
> 
> I think your heart is in the right place with this patch, but I doubt
> that it is going to be all that productive in practice. Most tests
> consist of a long list of commands, and cleaning up properly after every
> possible failure case is going to be a lot of work. And worse, since the
> tests generally _don't_ fail, you have no way to test that your cleanup
> is reasonable.
> 
> So I think we will end up in the case where a few failed tests will
> properly clean themselves up and let further tests proceed, but most
> failures will leave a big question. In other words, what problem have we
> solved?  If tests N and N+k both fail, would you, even with this patch,
> suspect N+k of actually failing, or would you first go and debug test N?
> Is that any different than what you do now?