Subject: Re: [PATCH 03/24] t7600 (merge): do not launch gitk for --debug

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 05:44:32 -0500

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> The main issue here is that --debug means two things. It runs
> test_debug() code AND instructs the test-lib not to remove the trash
> directory when it's done.

Most of the time I use --immediate, insert an explicit "exit", or hit
^C instead of waiting for the test to complete anyway.  --debug always
struck me as a theoretically useful thing (more useful output!) though
I never used it much.

> If we had a separate --keep-trash option most of this problem would go
> away, no?

That might be useful for e.g. automatically re-running tests with
expected failures or unexpected successes and tarring up the test
repo.

> Aside from that it's better to use git log rather than gitk in
> test_debug, since it's in text form it can be easily sent along with a
> failing test, which is not the case for dozens of gitk invocations.

Right, the effect of this patch is good though I agree with Sverre
that its method is ugly.

Maybe unconditionally printing a log between tests would be good
behavior for --debug after all.  Not sure.