Re: [PATCH] Testsuite: use $SHELL to run tests which are shell scripts.

[Stefano Lattarini]

On Thursday 02 September 2010, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Well, the only qualm I have with this is that it will in the long
> run make it less likely that we are portable to /bin/sh too.  Not
> a problem per se, but being able to do
>   cd tests
>   ./foo.test    (or $srcdir/foo.test)
> 
> to quickly run a test interactively may then expose a different
> behavior than ordinary 'make check' would.  We could adjust the
> documentation to state that in order to run tests manually, one
> should do
>   $good_shell ./foo.test
> 
> but if you haven't used CONFIG_SHELL for configure (which is the
> case for virtually all users), they might not even know the value
> of $good_shell that would be used during 'make check'.  Could
> cause slightly less reliably reproducible bug reports.
True.  A not-so-big issue IMHO, but an issue nonetheless.
 
> The patch has obvious advantages though.  How to best ameliorate
> the disadvantages?
Hmm... maybe by making `tests/defs' re-execute the current test with 
$CONFIG_SHELL unless a proper environment variable (let's say 
`AM_TESTSUITE_NO_REEXEC') is set?
Then we can set AM_TESTSUITE_NO_REEXEC in TEST_ENVIRONMENT (or
its equivalent under `parallel-tests' option), to avoid useless
re-execs.

I think we shouls apply the current patch as-is, and leave the 
outlined follow-up patch as material for the tests-init branch.
WDYT?

Thanks,
  Stefano