Re: [PATCH 1/1] tests: teach the test-tool to generate NUL bytes and use it

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> On Thu, 14 Feb 2019, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> "Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com>
>> writes:
>> 
>> > From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
>> >
>> > In cc95bc2025 (t5562: replace /dev/zero with a pipe from
>> > generate_zero_bytes, 2019-02-09), we replaced usage of /dev/zero (which
>> > is not available on NonStop, apparently) by a Perl script snippet to
>> > generate NUL bytes.
>> >
>> > Sadly, it does not seem to work on NonStop, as t5562 reportedly hangs.
>> > ...
>> > In the end, though, what counts is that this here change incidentally
>> > fixes that hang (maybe also on NonStop?). Even more positively, it gets
>> > rid of yet another unnecessary Perl invocation.
>> 
>> Thanks for a quick band-aid.
>> 
>> Will apply directly to 'master' so that we won't forget before -rc2.
>
> Thank you, that will be good, as the builds still seem to fail. All of
> them.

Actually, I am really tempted to instead not apply this, but revert
that genzerobytes Perl thing.  This assumes that your Azure thing
did not have the breakage before we applied that patchset.  What do
you think?

Trying four or more possible band-aids that may or may not work
without knowing what the real cause of the hangs are is not
something I want to see people spend excessive time of theirs on
this close to the final.  I'd rather avoid distraction and see
people spend their cycles on bugs that matter, instead of trying to
chase test breakages that have always been present for those without
/dev/zero.  I am not fundamentally opposed to supporting those
without /dev/zero but I'd prefer to see it happen in 'pu' until we
identify and fix the real cause---which may well be a real bug in
the http-backend stuff---and the time to do that is not during the
rc period where we close the tree for new features and non-regression
fixes.