Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] some unit-test Makefile polishing

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Feb 2, 2024, 23:52 UTC
Message-ID: <b7b92f1a-9231-2f53-299e-ad58fc699284@gmx.de>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh6irwtkd.fsf@gitster.g>

Hi Junio,

On Thu, 1 Feb 2024, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> https://github.com/git/git/actions/runs/7748054008 is a run of 'next'
> that is broken.
>
> https://github.com/git/git/actions/runs/7748547579 is a run of 'seen~1'
> with this topic reverted (the ps/reftable-backend topic is excluded),
> which seems to pass.
>
> Does it ring a bell, anybody?

Yes, it does ring a clear bell over here. https://github.com/git/git/actions/runs/7748054008/job/21130098985#step:5:81 points to the culprit:

    fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
    make: *** [../config.mak.uname:753: vcxproj] Error 128

The line 753 of that file (as can be seen at https://github.com/git/git/blob/38aa6559b0c513d755d6d5ccf32414ed63754726/config.mak.uname#L753) is the first statement of the `vcxproj` target, executing `update-refresh`:

    vcxproj:
        # Require clean work tree
        git update-index -q --refresh && \
        git diff-files --quiet && \
        git diff-index --cached --quiet HEAD --
        [...]

This means that `vcxproj` is executed. And the explanation is in https://github.com/git/git/actions/runs/7748054008/job/21130098985#step:5:78, which runs `make --quiet -C t 'T=<long-list-of-files>'`, crucially _without_ specifying any Makefile rule, and the `vcxproj` rule happens to be the first one that is defined on Windows, so it's used by default.

One workaround would be to remove the `vcxproj` rule (which by now has been safely superseded by the CMake support we have in `contrib/buildsystems/`).

But the safer way would be to insert these two lines at the beginning of `t/Makefile` (cargo-culted from the top-level `Makefile`):

    # The default target of this Makefile is...
    all::

Ciao, Johannes