Re: Bug#355368: coreutils: FTBS if SHELL variable is not set

[Sven Joachim]

Hello Jim,

thanks for your prompt reply.  I just downloaded the coreutils 6.1
package from alpha.gnu.org, and it seems this test no longer fails.
However, there is another dircolors related problem if SHELL is not
set.  I ran (unset SHELL; make VERBOSE=yes -k check) and noticed the
following failure:

[...]
Making check in dircolors
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/coreutils-6.1/tests/dircolors'
make  check-TESTS
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/coreutils-6.1/tests/dircolors'
dircolors (GNU coreutils) 6.1
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software.  You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by H. Peter Anvin.
a...
-: test a: stderr mismatch, comparing a.E (actual) and a.1 (expected)
*** a.E Mon Aug 21 14:02:41 2006
--- a.1 Mon Aug 21 14:02:41 2006
***************
*** 1 ****
! dircolors: no SHELL environment variable, and no shell type option given
--- 1 ----
! dircolors: k:1: invalid line;  missing second token
quote...
other-wr...
FAIL: simple
======================================
1 of 1 tests failed
Please report to address@hidden
======================================
[...]

The following ChangeLog entry might be interesting:

2006-03-03  Jim Meyering  <address@hidden>

        Don't fail when run from an environment with SHELL not a Bourne
        shell, e.g. `env SHELL=/bin/csh make check' would fail this test.
        * tests/dircolors/simple: Invoke each non-failing test with -b.
        Reported by Michael Stone.


In the Debian package, this test did not fail because Michael had
patched tests/dircolors/simple by putting in a line with

$ENV{'SHELL'} = '/bin/sh';

before running the tests.  Maybe you should do something similar.

Kind regards,

Sven