RE: [PATCH v2 4/6] Force test suite traps to be cleared for NonStop ksh

["Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

On January 19, 2018 4:27 PM, Jeff King wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 12:34:04PM -0500, randall.s.becker@rogers.com wrote:
> 
> > From: "Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
> >
> > * t/lib-git-daemon.sh: fix incompatibilities with ksh traps not being
> >   cleared automatically on platform. This caused tests to seem to fail
> >   while actually succeeding.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
> > ---
> >  t/lib-git-daemon.sh | 3 +++
> >  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/t/lib-git-daemon.sh b/t/lib-git-daemon.sh index
> > 987d40680..955beecd9 100644
> > --- a/t/lib-git-daemon.sh
> > +++ b/t/lib-git-daemon.sh
> > @@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ start_git_daemon() {
> >  		test_skip_or_die $GIT_TEST_GIT_DAEMON \
> >  			"git daemon failed to start"
> >  	fi
> > +	trap '' EXIT
> >  }
> 
> I don't think this can be right. The way these traps are supposed to work is:
> 
>   - as soon as test-lib.sh is loaded, we "trap die EXIT" to catch an
>     accidental death/exit from one of the scripts
> 
>   - when test_done is called, we clear the trap (i.e., it is OK to exit
>     now because the script has given us a positive indication that all
>     tests have been run)
> 
>   - while the child git-daemon is running, we'd want to clean up after
>     ourselves. So during start_git_daemon() we add our cleanup (followed
>     by the original "die", because shell traps don't push onto a stack).
>     And then at stop_git_daemon(), we restore the original die trap.
> 
> But this patch means that while git-daemon is running, we have no trap at all!
> That means that a failed test which causes us to exit would leave a child
> daemon running.
> 
> Furthermore, both of these functions now drop the 'die' trap entirely,
> meaning the script would fail to notice premature exit from one of the test
> snippets.
> 
> So while this may be papering over a problem on NonStop, I think it's
> breaking the intent of the traps.
> 
> I'm not sure what the root of the problem is, but it sounds like ksh may be
> triggering EXIT traps when we don't expect (during function returns?
> Subshell exits? Other?)

The "unexpected" EXIT traps are exactly the issue we found when working with the platform support team. There was some discussion about what the right expectation was, and I was not able to have a change made to ksh on the platform. The problem may have a similar (identical?) root cause to the Perl exit issues we are also experiencing that is in their hands. I'm currently retesting without this change (results in 36 hours ☹ ). Is there a preferred way you would like me to bypass this except on NonStop? I can add a check based on uname.

Cheers,
Randall