Re: [PATCH v4 7/9] t3437: test script for fixup [-C|-c] options in interactive rebase

> > > What is "merge_" doing here? It doesn't seem to be used by this patch.
> >
> > Yeah, it's not used, but it might be a good thing to add this for
> > consistency while at it.
>
> It confuses readers (as it did to me), causing them to waste
> brain-cycles trying to figure out why it's present. Thus, it would be
> better to add it when it's actually needed. The waste of brain-cycles
> and time is especially important on a project like Git for which
> reviewers and reviewer time are limited resources.
>

> > > > +# Copyright (c) 2018 Phillip Wood
> > >
> > > Did Phillip write this script? Is this patch based upon an old patch from him?
> >
> > Yeah, it might be a good idea to add a "Based-on-patch-by: Phillip ..."
>
> Agreed.
>
> > > The implementation of test_commit_message() is a bit hard to follow.
> > > It might be simpler to write it more concisely and directly like this:
> > >
> > >     git show --no-patch --pretty=format:%B "$1" >actual &&
> > >     case "$2" in
> > >     -m) echo "$3" >expect && test_cmp expect actual ;;
> >
> > I think we try to avoid many commands on the same line.
>
> For something this minor, it's not likely to matter but, of course, it
> could be split over two lines:
>
>     -m) echo "$3" >expect &&
>         test_cmp expect actual ;;
>
> > >     *) test_cmp "$2" actual ;;
> > >     esac
> >
> > In general I am not sure that using $1, $2, $3 directly makes things
> > easier to understand, but yeah, with the function documentation that
> > you suggest, it might be better to write the function using them
> > directly.
>
> The direct $1, $2, etc. was just an example. It's certainly possible
> to give them names even in the rewritten code I presented. One good
> reason, however, for just using $1, $2, etc. is that $2 is not well
> defined; sometimes it's a switch ("-m") and sometimes its a pathname,
> so it's hard to invent a suitable variable name for it. Also, this
> function becomes so simple (in the rewritten version) that explicit
> variable names don't add a lot of value (the cognitive load is quite
> low because the function is so short).
>

> > > Style nit: In Git test scripts, the here-doc body and EOF are indented
> > > the same amount as the command which opened the here-doc:
> >
> > I don't think we are very consistent with this and I didn't find
> > anything about this in CodingGuidelines.
> >
> > In t0008 and t0021 for example, the indentation is more like:
> >
> >      cat >message <<-EOF &&
> >           amend! B
> >           ...
> >           body
> >      EOF
> >
> > and I like this style, as it seems clearer than the other styles.
>
> I performed a quick survey of the heredoc styles in the tests. Here
> are the results[1] of my analysis on the 'seen' branch:
>
> total-heredocs=4128
>
> same-indent=3053 (<<EOF & body & EOF share indent)
>
>     cat >expect <<-\EOF
>     body
>     EOF
>
> body-eof-indented=24 (body & EOF indented)
>
>     cat >expect <<-\EOF
>         body
>         EOF
>
> body-indented=735 (body indented; EOF not)
>
>     cat >expect <<-\EOF
>         body
>     EOF
>
> left-margin=316 (<<EOF indented; body & EOF not)
>
>         cat >expect <<\EOF
>     body
>     EOF
>
> So, the indentation recommended in my review -- with 3053 instances
> out of 4128 heredocs -- is by far the most prevalent in the project.
>
> [1]: Note that there is a miniscule amount of inaccuracy in the
> numbers because there are a few cases in which heredocs contain other
> heredocs, and some scripts build heredocs piecemeal when constructing
> other scripts, and I didn't bother making my analysis script handle
> those few cases. The inaccuracy is tiny, thus not meaningful to the
> overall picture.
>

> > >     fixup-*)
> > >         action=$(echo "$line" | sed 's/-/ -/');;
> >
> > I agree that "fixup" arguments are not arbitrary at all, but I think
> > it makes things simpler to just use one way to encode spaces instead
> > of many different ways.
>
> Is that the intention here, though? Is the idea that some day `fixup`
> will accept arbitrary arguments thus needs to encode spaces? If not,
> then mirroring the treatment given to `exec` confuses readers into
> thinking that it will/should accept arbitrary arguments. I brought
> this up in my review specifically because it was confusing to a person
> (me) new to this topic and reading the patches for the first time. The
> more specific and exact the code can be, the less likely it will
> confuse readers in the future.
>

> > Yeah, perhaps the global "expected-message" could be renamed for
> > example "global-expected-message", and tests which need a specific one
> > could prepare and use a custom "expected-message" (maybe named
> > "custom-expected-message") without ever changing
> > "global-expected-message".
>
> That would be fine, though I wondered while reviewing the patch if a
> global "expect-message" file was even needed since it didn't seem like
> very many tests used it (but I didn't spend a lot of time counting the
> exact number of tests due to the high cognitive load tracing how that
> file might mutate as it passed through each test).
>
> Another really good reason for avoiding having later tests depend upon
> mutations from earlier tests, if possible, is that it makes it easier
> to run tests selectively with --run or GIT_SKIP_TESTS.