Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

So would it be worth it to just revert 8ef1abe550, and always store the
meta-files? That's one less option to support, and one less surprise
when some other feature is built around them.

Or is there some reason that we really want to have a mode where nothing
is written into t/? From reading 8ef1abe550 it sounded like this was
mostly a hygiene / optimization thing, and not some special mode we
cared about supporting.

Interesting thought.  It would simplify our lives to have fewer
conditionally-moving parts.

quoted

 t/test-lib.sh | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

The patch itself looks correct, if we want to go with a --counts option.

Yes.