t0000: check whether the shell supports the "local" keywordmh/test-local-canary

Add a test balloon to see if we get complaints from anybody who is
using a shell that doesn't support the "local" keyword. If so, this
test can be reverted. If not, we might want to consider using "local"
in shell code throughout the git code base.

Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 25 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/t/t0000-basic.sh b/t/t0000-basic.sh
index 1aa5093f36..7fd87dd544 100755
--- a/t/t0000-basic.sh
+++ b/t/t0000-basic.sh
@@ -20,6 +20,31 @@ modification *should* take notice and update the test vectors here.
 
 . ./test-lib.sh
 
+try_local_x () {
+	local x="local" &&
+	echo "$x"
+}
+
+# This test is an experiment to check whether any Git users are using
+# Shells that don't support the "local" keyword. "local" is not
+# POSIX-standard, but it is very widely supported by POSIX-compliant
+# shells, and if it doesn't cause problems for people, we would like
+# to be able to use it in Git code.
+#
+# For now, this is the only test that requires "local". If your shell
+# fails this test, you can ignore the failure, but please report the
+# problem to the Git mailing list <git@vger.kernel.org>, as it might
+# convince us to continue avoiding the use of "local".
+test_expect_success 'verify that the running shell supports "local"' '
+	x="notlocal" &&
+	echo "local" >expected1 &&
+	try_local_x >actual1 &&
+	test_cmp expected1 actual1 &&
+	echo "notlocal" >expected2 &&
+	echo "$x" >actual2 &&
+	test_cmp expected2 actual2
+'
+
 ################################################################
 # git init has been done in an empty repository.
 # make sure it is empty.