Re: [PATCH 1/2] test-path-utils.c: remove incorrect assumption

> Ray Donnelly <mingw.android@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> Some callers of this function in real code (i.e. not the one you are
>>> removing the check) do seem to depend on that condition, e.g. the
>>> codepath in clone that leads to add_to_alternates_file() wants to
>>> make sure it does not add an duplicate, so it may end up not noticing
>>> /foo/bar and /foo/bar/ are the same thing, no?  There may be others.
>>
>> Enforcing that normalize_path_copy() removes any trailing '/' (apart
>> from the root directory) breaks other things that assume it doesn't
>> mess with trailing '/'s, for example filtering in ls-tree. Any
>> suggestions for what to do about this? Would a flag be appropriate as
>> to whether to do this part or not? Though I'll admit I don't like the
>> idea of adding flags to modify the behavior of something that's meant
>> to "normalize" something. Alternatively, I could go through all the
>> breakages and try to fix them up?
>
> I agree with you that "normalize" should "normalize".  Making sure
> that all the callers expect the same kind of normalization would be
> a lot of work but I do think that is the best approach in the long
> run.  Thanks for the ls-tree example, by the way, did you find it by
> code inspection?  I do not think it is reasonable to expect the test
> coverage for this to be 100%, so the "try to fix them up" would have
> to involve a lot of manual work both in fixing and reviewing,
> unfortunately.

>
> The first step of the "best approach" would be to make a note on
> normalize_path_copy() by adding a NEEDSWORK: comment to describe the
> situation.
>
> Thanks.