Re: [PATCH 3/6] Facilitate debugging Git executables in tests with gdb

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Oct 30, 2015, 19:26 UTC
Message-ID: <20151030192652.GA5336@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1510301923010.31610@s15462909.onlinehome-server.info>

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 07:25:24PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> > I agree doing so would be crazy. But would:
> > 
> >   ./t1234-frotz.sh --gdb=17
> > 
> > be sane to run gdb only inside test 17?
> 
> It would probably be sane, but I never encountered the need for something
> like that. It was always much easier to run the test using `sh -x t... -i
> -v` to find out what command was behaving funnily (mind you, that can be a
> pretty hard thing todo, we have some quite convoluted test scripts in our
> code base) and then edit the test.
> 
> I would expect that `--gdb=<n>` thing to drive me crazy: first, I would
> choose the wrong number. Next, I would probably forget that test_commit
> and other commands *also* calls Git.

Yeah, good points. You somehow have to say "debug _this_ git invocation", and there is probably not a more precise way to do that than sticking something in the code on the right line.

I do think I like Junio's "debug git foo" rather than setting the environment variable, as its syntactically a little simpler to type (and of course it would probably be implemented with an environment variable, so one could whichever style they prefer).

-Peff