The test 'cvs update (-p)' redirects and checks 'test_cmp's stdout and even its stderr. The commit introducing this test in 6e8937a084 (cvsserver: Add test for update -p, 2008-03-27) doesn't discuss why, in fact its log message only consists of that subject line. Anyway, weird as it is, it kind of made sense due to the way that test was structured: After a bit of preparation, this test updates four files via CVS and checks their contents using 'test_cmp', but it does so in a for loop iterating over the names of those four files. Now, the exit status of a for loop is the exit status of the last command executed in the loop, meaning that the test can't simply rely on the exit code of 'test_cmp' in the loop's body. Instead, the test works it around by relying on the stdout of 'test_cmp' being silent on success and showing the diff on failure, as it appends the stdout of all four 'test_cmp' invocations to a single file and checks that file's emptiness after the loop (with 'test -z "$(cat ...)"', no less; there was no 'test_must_be_empty' back then). Furthermore, the test redirects the stderr of those 'test_cmp' invocations to this file, too: while 'test_cmp' itself doesn't output anything to stderr, the invoked 'diff' or 'cmp' commands do send their error messages there, e.g. if they can't open a file because its name was misspelled. This also makes this test fail when the test script is run with '-x' tracing (and using a shell other than a Bash version supporting BASH_XTRACEFD), because 'test_cmp's stderr contains the trace of the 'diff' command executed inside the helper function, throwing off the subsequent emptiness check. Stop relying on 'test_cmp's output and instead run 'test_cmp a b || return 1' in the for loop in order to make 'test_cmp's error code fail the test. Furthermore, add the missing && after the cvs command to create a && chain in the loop's body. After this change t9400 passes with '-x', even when running with /bin/sh. Signed-off-by: SZEDER Gábor <szeder.dev@xxxxxxxxx> --- Changes: Use Eric's suggestion and run 'test_cmp a b || return 1' in the for loop to fail the test. t/t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh | 7 +++---- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/t/t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh b/t/t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh index c30660d606..5ff3789199 100755 --- a/t/t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh +++ b/t/t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh @@ -449,10 +449,9 @@ test_expect_success 'cvs update (-p)' ' GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update && rm -f failures && for i in merge no-lf empty really-empty; do - GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update -p "$i" >$i.out - test_cmp $i.out ../$i >>failures 2>&1 - done && - test -z "$(cat failures)" + GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update -p "$i" >$i.out && + test_cmp $i.out ../$i || return 1 + done ' cd "$WORKDIR" -- 2.16.2.603.g180c1428f0