Re: [PATCH 3/3] test-lib: reduce verbosity of skipped tests

On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 8:44 AM Taylor Blau [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 11:26:04PM +0000, Elijah Newren via GitGitGadget wrote:

quoted

From: Elijah Newren <redacted>

When using the --run flag to run just two or three tests from a test
file which contains several dozen tests, having every skipped test print
out dozens of lines of output for the test code for that skipped test
adds up to hundreds or thousands of lines of irrelevant output that make
it very hard to fish out the relevant results you were looking for.
Simplify the output for skipped tests down to just showing the one-line
descriptions.

Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <redacted>
---
 t/test-lib.sh | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/t/test-lib.sh b/t/test-lib.sh
index 2aca398e1e..7602bbe9e9 100644
--- a/t/test-lib.sh
+++ b/t/test-lib.sh

@@ -1059,7 +1059,7 @@ test_skip () {
                              "      <skipped message=\"$message\" />"
              fi

-             say_color skip >&3 "skipping test: $@"
+             say_color skip >&3 "skipping test: $1"

I would be comfortable going further than this and removing this line
entirely. We need the "ok $test_count # skip" below since it's part of
our TAP output, but now the output looks somewhat redundant.

With this patch running a test that I'm working on with `--run=...`, I
get output that looks like:

  skipping test: writing bitmaps via command-line can duplicate .keep objects
  ok 2 # skip writing bitmaps via command-line can duplicate .keep objects (--run)

  skipping test: writing bitmaps via config can duplicate .keep objects
  ok 3 # skip writing bitmaps via config can duplicate .keep objects (--run)

Scanning over the same test description twice per skipped test makes the
output difficult (but still much easier than before) to scan. What do
you think about either of the following:

  skipping test: writing bitmaps via command-line can duplicate .keep objects
  ok 2 # skip (--run)

or:

  ok 2 # skip writing bitmaps via command-line can duplicate .keep objects (--run)

I have a slight preference towards the latter, since it keeps more of
the information in the TAP line, and it cuts the total line count of
output from skipped tests in half.

For what it's worth, I'd also be fine with the patch as-is.

I was worried that shortening it as much as I did would run into
objections for some obscure reason.  But if no one objects, I think
I'd also prefer your latter suggestion for shortening it even more.
It looks like the dual output for skipped tests comes from commit
04ece59399 ("GIT_SKIP_TESTS: allow users to omit tests that are known
to break", 2006-12-28) by Junio, so it'd be nice to hear his opinion
on how much we shorten it.