Subject: Re: [PATCH] test-lib.sh - cygwin does not have usable FIFOs

From: Mark Levedahl <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 18:18:07 -0400

On 07/06/2013 08:55 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Mark Levedahl wrote:
>
>> Do not use FIFOs on cygwin, they do not work. Cygwin includes
>> coreutils, so has mkfifo, and that command does something. However,
>> the resultant named pipe is known (on the Cygwin mailing list at
>> least) to not work correctly.
> Hm.  How would you recommend going about writing a script that takes
> output from a command, transforms it, and then feeds it back into
> that command's input?  Are sockets a more reliable way to do this kind
> of IPC on Cygwin?
>
> See reinit_git and try_dump from t9010-svn-fe.sh for context.
>
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
>

On the one hand, sockets work fine on cygwin so that path would probably 
work.

However, I don't understand why git would need to consume its own output 
- If named pipes are really needed to use git-svn because git-svn 
depends upon git feeding the same git process, then that package should 
not be available on cygwin or any other platform that does not support 
fifos. If not, then I don't think the test suite should require fifos or 
any other construct with the same git process feeding itself either, it 
just blurs the line about what is actually being tested.

Mark