Re: $PATH pollution and t9902-completion.sh

> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 01:05:38AM +0000, Adam Spiers wrote:
>>> t/t9902-completion.sh is currently failing for me because I happen to
>>> have a custom shell-script called git-check-email in ~/bin, which is
>>> on my $PATH.  This is different to a similar-looking case reported
>>> recently, which was due to an unclean working tree:
>>>
>>>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/208085
>>>
>>> It's not unthinkable that in the future other tests could break for
>>> similar reasons.  Therefore it would be good to sanitize $PATH in the
>>> test framework so that it cannot destabilize tests, although I am
>>> struggling to think of a good way of doing this.  Naively stripping
>>> directories under $HOME would not protect against git "plugins" such
>>> as the above being installed into places like /usr/bin.  Thoughts?
>>
>> I've run into this, too. I think sanitizing $PATH is the wrong approach.
>> The real problem is that the test is overly picky. Right now it is
>> failing because you happen to have "check-email" in your $PATH, but it
>> will also need to be adjusted when a true "check-email" command is added
>> to git.
>>
>> I can think of two other options:
>>
>>   1. Make the test input more specific (e.g., looking for "checkou").
>>      This doesn't eliminate the problem, but makes it less likely
>>      to occur.
>>
>>   2. Loosen the test to look for the presence of "checkout", but not
>>      fail when other items are present. Bonus points if it makes sure
>>      that everything returned starts with "check".
>>
>> I think (2) is the ideal solution in terms of behavior, but writing it
>> may be more of a pain.
> 
> I agree with all your points.  Thanks for the suggestions.