On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 2:46 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Stefan Beller <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > >> ... > >> OTOH, if it were up to me I would have just gotten rid of > >> test_must_be_empty and used an existing function with the right > >> argument, like `test_cmp /dev/null` - but using some form consistently > >> is the most important, whatever it is. > > > > /dev/null, eh? It shows you don't use Windows on a day to day basis. ;-) > > But yeah consistency is really good to have. :) > > Just to make sure we don't give wrong impression to bystanders, do > you mean that we should discourage using /dev/null in our tests or > scripts due to portability concerns? I would discourage reading /dev/null (as in `test_cmp /dev/null actual`) over a more specific `test_must_be_empty` as that is easier to read. (But I do neither en- or discourage the use of /dev/null in the implementation of that function). > I thought they had good enough emulation that writing /dev/null on > the command line in scripts do what we expect the shell to do; the > same thing can be said for calling open(2) on "/dev/null". Oh, opening and reading is new to me, thanks! > Back to the topic from the tangent, but there was a discussion on > choosing between "test_must_be_empty actual" vs "test_cmp empty > actual", and was even a proposal to trigger an error when an empty > file is given to test_cmp. Oh, that is an interesting way to ensure consistency. > You two might want to join the party > there, perhaps? I'll read into that. Stefan