Re: sh -x -i -v with continuous integration, was Re: [PATCH 1/4] t7601: test for pull.ff=true overrides merge.ff=false

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Yes.  

An unconstrained "verbose" that applies to anything would make people less careful to come up with more useful abstractions, e.g. test_line_count, which I view as a bigger problem.

"verbose test", regardless of how it is spelled, either as two words "verbose test", a "verbose_test" helper, or a helper function that overrides "test", share the same issue, as their unconstrained-ness comes from the fact that test is too broad a command. I'd rather want to see us move more in the direction of encouraging things like test_line_count, which makes it easier to write new tests with less mistakes (e.g. by hiding the BSD wc pitfall "$(wc -l <file)", in test_line_count's case).