Re: [RFC/PATCH] WIP: Report intra-test progress with TAP subtests

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 00:44, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Maybe the test harness could automate that a little, by using
>> set -x at the beginning and set +x at the end of each test.
>
> The main use case for this for me is the smoke tester output, where
> you won't get access to the original machine (without asking). Having
> a few intra-test checkpoints helps you to see where things might have
> gone wrong.

I meant something like this:
-- 8< --
diff --git a/t/test-lib.sh b/t/test-lib.sh
index e5523dd..a4bc358 100644
--- a/t/test-lib.sh
+++ b/t/test-lib.sh
@@ -368,9 +368,11 @@ test_debug () {
 
 test_run_ () {
 	test_cleanup=:
+	set -x
 	eval >&3 2>&4 "$1"
 	eval_ret=$?
 	eval >&3 2>&4 "$test_cleanup"
+	set +x
 	if test "$verbose" = "t" && test -n "$HARNESS_ACTIVE"; then
 		echo ""
 	fi
-- >8 --

but made optional and with output munged into parsable format by
changing PS4 (or "set -T" with a DEBUG trap, if that’s portable
enough).