Subject: Re: Expected test suite behavior

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2026 10:11:59 +0900

"brian m. carlson" <[email-masked]> writes:

> I think I know what the problem is: you're running as root.  I suspect
> `test -x` in the test says that you have permission to execute it
> because you're root and root always ignores permissions.  My guess is
> that most of the tests you're failing have to do with permissions of
> some sort that are being ignored because you're privileged.

I know !SANITY defeats a-rw and lets the tester read or write to the
path, but this is the first time I heard that !SANITY defeats a-x
and lets the tester _execute_ it.

I do not think we drop POSIXPERM prereq when !SANITY automatically,
and I do not think we should, but we should probably have an
automated check to drop POSIXPERM?

    (
	# is an unexecutable look to the user as executable?
	umask 0; >testfile; chmod a-w testfile; test -x testfile;
	status=$?;
	rm -f testfile; exit $status
    )

> I'll just note that if you just want to do Git development, macOS is a
> fully supported platform on which to do that.  I will admit most of the
> major contributors (with the notable exception of the Git for Windows
> maintainer) do use Linux and of course I like and endorse Debian, but
> macOS should build and run just fine if you prefer that.

Hear hear.

We want to encourage developers to do more _native_ development on
their own system, and this is not limited to macOS.  As long as
users on a particular platform rely on working Git there, we are
better off if we have more people actively using that platform to
build, test, develop on, and debug Git for their own use.

Thanks.