Re: [RFC] Add basic syntax check on shell scripts

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2012, 19:39 UTC
Message-ID: <7vobi9mwt4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8BxviWRHqGvptsJVmkFM6HQa9HnLWsh5V6Ec6Fqv52sGA@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

>> This (once it gets cleaned up to reduce false positives) belongs to
>> "cd t && make test-lint".
>
> Or a project commit hook?

Surely. It is OK to have "cd t && make test-lint" in your pre-commit hook.

A few more things in addition to what Torsten's script attempts to catch that we would want to catch are:

 * Do not spell string equality with "test $a == $b"; that is
   bash-ism and you only need "=" (which works in bash, too);

 * Do not capture output from "wc -l" in a variable and string
   compare with a constant, e.g.

	lnum=$(wc -l <...) && test "$lnum" = 9

   as some wc implementations place extra SP in its output;

 * Do not use "test_must_fail" to run non-git command and require it
   to fail (instead, just write "! cmd").

 * Do not write ERE with backslashes and expect "grep" to grok them;
   that's GNUism.  e.g.

	grep "^\(author\|committer\) "

   is bad.  Use egrep (or "grep -E") if you want to use ERE.