Re: [PATCH 13/19] mingw: outsmart MSYS2's path substitution in t1508

> On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> > Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
> > 
> > > From: Thomas Braun <thomas.braun@byte-physics.de>
> > >
> > > A string of the form "@/abcd" is considered a file path
> > > by the msys layer and therefore translated to a Windows path.
> > >
> > > Here the trick is to double the slashes.
> > >
> > > The MSYS2 patch translation can be studied by calling
> > >
> > > 	test-path-utils print_path <path>
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Thomas Braun <thomas.braun@byte-physics.de>
> > > Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
> > > ---
> > 
> > This feels wrong.
> > 
> > The point of this test is that you can ask to checkout a branch
> > whose name is a strangely looking "@/at-test", and a ref whose name
> > is "refs/heads/@/at-test" indeed is created.
> > 
> > The current "checkout" may be lazy and not signal an error for a
> > branch name with two consecutive slashes, but I wouldn't be
> > surprised if we tighten that later, and more importantly, I do not
> > think we ever promised users if you asked a branch "a//b" to be
> > created, we would create "refs/heads/a/b".
> > 
> > The new test hardcodes and promises such an incompatible behaviour,
> > i.e. a request to create "@//b" results in "@/b" created, only to
> > users on MINGW, fracturing the expectations of the Git userbase.
> > 
> > Wouldn't it be better to declare "On other people's Git, @/foo is
> > just as normal a branch name as a/foo, but on MINGW @/foo cannot be
> > used" by skipping some tests using prerequisites instead?
> 
> As Eric points out, this is not so much a behavior on Git as of the MSYS2
> Bash. In fact, if you call `git.exe checkout -b @/at-test` from a cmd
> window, it works just as advertised.
> 
> But your comment made me inspect the entire t9100 again, wondering why
> things work when we copy the contents instead of symlinking them. And you
> know what, even if I could have sworn that I verified for every patch in
> this series that it is actually necessary to pass the test suite, it is
> *not* necessary.
> 
> So I backed it out and it won't be part of v2 anymore.