Re: coreutils-8.13.29-43a9 on NetBSD 5.1

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 10/08/2011 03:46 PM, Bruno Haible wrote:
>> On NetBSD 5.1/x86: 10 failures
>>
>> FAIL: split/l-chunk
>
> This one at least was due to missing /dev/zero
> which is not required by POSIX so the attached
> skips the tests requiring it.

Thanks for the patch.

> From 274a4bff32efb2fb483d19d9884e3f1be03cf849 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: =?UTF-8?q?P=C3=A1draig=20Brady?= <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2011 23:30:02 +0100
> Subject: [PATCH] tests: don't assume the existence of /dev/zero
>
> /dev/zero is not defined by POSIX and is
> not available on NetBSD at least.
>
...
> +# TODO: we might relax this requirement in some tests, if
> +# for example, truncate --alloc (posix_fallocate) is implemented.
> +require_dev_zero_()
> +{
> +  test -c /dev/zero ||
> +    skip_ "This test requires /dev/zero support."
> +}

This TODO seems like good justification for adding the truncate option.

However, just to be a little paranoid, it might be better
to ensure that we can actually read from it, too.

What do you think about a syntax-check that requires a use of
require_dev_zero_ in each file under tests/ that uses /dev/zero?