tiny-pilot / tiny-pilot/tinypilot
Use shellcheck for bats tests without workaround
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- Python
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Description
Unfortunately, the shellcheck+bats situation is a bit messy right now. Once they get things in order again, we can refactor our bats bash tests:
- Remove the workaround for the warnings about the
$output/$status/$linesvariables (see below) - Use the
@testprefix notation instead of the#@testcomment notation.- I.e.,
@test test_some_command() {instead oftest_some_command() { #@test
- I.e.,
Backstory / Workaround
shellcheck has built-in support for .bats files, even if these files use the (otherwise non-standard) @test prefix. However, there was a regression in shellcheck, where shellcheck now produces false positive info statements about potential modifications of the $output/$status/$lines variables, which is confusing and annoying.
Our current workaround is to put the following block at the beginning of every .bats file:
{
# Silence shellcheck for global bats variables.
# https://github.com/tiny-pilot/tinypilot/issues/1718
# shellcheck disable=SC2154
echo "${output}" "${status}" "${lines}" >/dev/null
}
This silences the SC2154 warnings that would otherwise appear.
Note that this workaround has to be wrapped in a custom “scope” (subshell), because of the shellcheck gotcha that directives immediately after the shebang apply to the entire file. The {...} ensures that the directive only ever applies to the echo statement, regardless of what else is between it and the shebang.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Find the repository's .bats files and inspect their current shellcheck workaround and test declaration syntax. Check the linked shellcheck and Bats guidance before changing anything, since the issue depends on the shellcheck regression being resolved. Done means the workaround is removed, tests use @test notation, and shellcheck runs without the described false positives.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- bash
- Domain
- testing-qa, tooling
- Issue type
- Refactor
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100