Subject: Re: [PATCH] t7500: fix tests with absolute path following ":(optional)" on Windows

From: Ben Knoble <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 09:43:55 -0400

> Le 20 oct. 2025 à 05:40, Johannes Sixt <[email-masked]> a écrit :
> 
> On Windows, the MSYS layer translates absolute path names generated by
> a shell script from the POSIX style /c/dir/file to the Windows style
> C:/dir/file form that is understood by git.exe. This happens only when
> the absolute path stands on its own as a program argument or a value of
> an environment variable.
> 
> The earlier commits 749d6d166d (config: values of pathname type can be
> prefixed with :(optional), 2025-09-28) and ccfcaf399f (parseopt: values
> of pathname type can be prefixed with :(optional), 2025-09-28) added
> test cases where ":(optional)" is inserted before an absolute path.
> $PWD is used to construct the absolute paths, which gives the POSIX
> form, and the result is ":(optional)/c/dir/template". Such command line
> arguments are no longer recognized as absolute paths and do not undergo
> translation.
> 
> Existing test cases that expect that the specified file does not exist
> are not incorrect (after all, git.exe will not find /c/dir/template).
> Yet, they are conceptually incorrect. That the use of $PWD is erroneous
> is revealed by a test case that expects that the optional file exists.
> Since no such test case is present, add one. Use "$(pwd)" to generate
> the absolute paths, so that the command line arguments become
> ":(optional)C:/dir/template".

Thanks! I probably assumed there was no meaningful difference between the value of PWD and what pwd computes, so (prematurely) optimized for a lookup over executing a command.

Going forward I will probably stick with using pwd, given the difference in platform behavior.

Is there a doc or test lint for that? If not, might be useful.