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Re: [Bug-tar] avoid spurious test failure (working --listed), #24
From: |
Ralph Corderoy |
Subject: |
Re: [Bug-tar] avoid spurious test failure (working --listed), #24 |
Date: |
Sun, 26 Feb 2006 11:44:20 +0000 |
Hi Sergey,
> Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:
> > The PATH shows the commercial product CoSort is installed. This can
> > replace AIX's normal sort. It's intended to be faster.
>
> Ah, thanks for the explanation.
>
> > I suspect it spews stats to stderr, possibly switchable. The user
> > needs to improve his AIX environment, at least when building
> > external software.
>
> Well, I guess so. He reported later that using native sort solved the
> problem, yet I think we'd better be prepared for such cases in the
> future.
No, I'm sorry, but I disagree. sort's stderr is silent unless there's a
problem. There's no expected problem so stderr shouldn't be discarded;
it weakens the test. Not discarding may cause problems on the < 0.01%
of platforms where sort spews crap on stderr but that shows a platform
problem, not a tar one, and it would bite more than just tar so tar
shouldn't work around it. More valuable would be the stderr output
where there is a genuine problem that needs tackling, but that would be
lost.
It's a slippery slope down which lies coping with other odd-ball
behaviour by one-man-and-his-grep.
Cheers,
Ralph.
Re: [Bug-tar] avoid spurious test failure (working --listed), #24, Dmitry V. Levin, 2006/02/25