[PATCH 2/4] tests: replace chainlint subshell with a function

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 28, 2023, 20:23 UTC
Message-ID: <20230328202302.GB1241631@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20230328202043.GA1241391@coredump.intra.peff.net>

To test that we don't break the &&-chain, test-lib.sh does something like:

   (exit 117) && $test_commands

and checks that the result is exit code 117. We don't care what that initial command is, as long as it exits with a unique code. Using "exit" works and is simple, but is a bit expensive since it requires a subshell (to avoid exiting the whole script!). This isn't usually very noticeable, but it can add up for scripts which have a large number of tests.

Using "return" naively won't work here, because we'd return from the function eval-ing the snippet (and it wouldn't find &&-chain breakages). But if we further push that into its own function, it does exactly what we want, without extra subshell overhead.

According to hyperfine, this produces a measurable improvement when running t3070 (which has 1800 tests, all of them quite short):

  'HEAD' ran
    1.09 ± 0.01 times faster than 'HEAD~1'

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 t/test-lib.sh | 6 +++++-
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/t/test-lib.sh b/t/test-lib.sh
index 09789566374..cfcbd899c5a 100644
--- a/t/test-lib.sh
+++ b/t/test-lib.sh
@@ -1086,6 +1086,10 @@ test_eval_ () {
 	return $test_eval_ret_
 }
 
+fail_117 () {
+	return 117
+}
+
 test_run_ () {
 	test_cleanup=:
 	expecting_failure=$2
@@ -1097,7 +1101,7 @@ test_run_ () {
 		trace=
 		# 117 is magic because it is unlikely to match the exit
 		# code of other programs
-		if test "OK-117" != "$(test_eval_ "(exit 117) && $1${LF}${LF}echo OK-\$?" 3>&1)"
+		if test "OK-117" != "$(test_eval_ "fail_117 && $1${LF}${LF}echo OK-\$?" 3>&1)"
 		then
 			BUG "broken &&-chain or run-away HERE-DOC: $1"
 		fi

-- 
2.40.0.616.gf524ec75088