devblog

doc/devblog/day_397__befuddled.mdwn

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+Been having a difficult time fixing the two remaining test suite failures
+when run on a FAT filesystem.
+
+On Friday, I got quite lost trying to understand the first failure. At
+first I thought it had something to do with queued git staging commands not
+being run in the right git environment when git-annex is using a different
+index file or work tree. I did find and fix a potential bug in that area.
+It might be that some reports long ago of git-annex branch files getting
+written to the master branch was caused by that. But, fixing it did not
+help with the test suite failure at hand.
+
+Today, I quickly found the actual cause of the first failure.
+Of course, it had nothing to do with queued git commands at
+all, and was a simple fix in the end.
+
+But, I've been staring at the second failure for hours and am not much
+wiser. All I know is, an invalid tree object gets generated by the adjusted
+branch code that contains some files more than once. (git gets very
+confused when a repository contains such tree objects; if you wanted to break a
+git repository, getting such trees into it might be a good way. *cough*) This
+invalid tree object seems to be caused by the basis ref for the adjusted branch
+diverging somehow from the adjusted branch itself. I have not been able to
+determine why or how the basis ref can diverge like that.
+
+Also, this failure is somewhat indeterminite, doesn't always occur and
+reordering the tests in the test suite can hide it. Weird.
+
+Well, hopefully looking at it again later with fresh eyes will help.