Re: $PATH pollution and t9902-completion.sh

> 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.