[00/20] t: drop Perl as a mandatory prerequisite

Message

Patrick Steinhardt March 20, 2025, 9:35 a.m. UTC

Hi,

while Git was initially building on Perl quite a lot, the significance
of Perl has been dwindling over the years as more and more functionality
was converted into C builtins. Nowadays, an installation with Perl-based
features disabled is almost fully functional, only a handful of features
remain that require Perl:

  - gitweb, a read-only web interface.

  - A couple of scripts that allow importing repositories from GNU Arch,
    CVS and Subversion.

  - git-send-email(1), which can be used to send mails.

  - Our Perl bindings for Git.

  - The netrc Git credential helper.

None of these features really are critical for day-to-day usage of Git,
and most users probably wouldn't even notice if those features were not
installed. Perl is thus very much optional nowadays.

There is one big exception though: it is impossible to run our test
suite without a Perl interpreter, so it is not easily possible to verify
that a Perl-less installation actually works as expected. For most of
the part though our test suite doesn't use all that much Perl, either.
It is present in a couple of critical paths, but those are easy to adapt
to not use Perl anymore.

This is exactly what this patch series does: it refactors a couple of
central parts in our test suite to not use Perl anymore so that it
becomes possible to run most of our tests entirely without Perl. Tests
that still depend on Perl are marked with a new PERL_TEST_HELPERS prereq
so that they only execute when a Perl interpreter is available.

With this patch series, 30342 out of 31358 tests pass, which is around
97% of our tests.

Thanks!

Patrick

---
Patrick Steinhardt (20):
      t: skip chain lint when PERL_PATH is unset
      t: refactor environment sanitization to not use Perl
      t: adapt character translation helpers to not use Perl
      t: adapt `test_copy_bytes()` to not use Perl
      t: adapt `test_readlink()` to not use Perl
      t: introduce PERL_TEST_HELPERS prerequisite
      t: adapt existing PERL prerequisites
      meson: stop requiring Perl when tests are enabled
      Makefile: stop requiring Perl when running tests
      t: refactor tests depending on Perl transliteration operator
      t: refactor tests depending on Perl substitution operator
      t: refactor tests depending on Perl to print data
      t: refactor tests depending on Perl for textconv scripts
      t/lib-gpg: refactor `sanitize_pgp()` to not depend on Perl
      t/lib-t6000: refactor `name_from_description()` to not depend on Perl
      t/lib-httpd: refactor "one-time-perl" CGI script to not depend on Perl
      t0021: refactor `generate_random_characters()` to not depend on Perl
      t0210: refactor trace2 scrubbing to not use Perl
      t5316: refactor `max_chain()` to not depend on Perl
      t5703: refactor test to not depend on Perl

 meson.build                               |  2 +-
 t/Makefile                                | 16 +++++++--
 t/helper/test-path-utils.c                | 13 ++++++++
 t/helper/test-sha1.sh                     |  4 +--
 t/lib-diff.sh                             |  4 +--
 t/lib-gpg.sh                              |  6 +---
 t/lib-httpd.sh                            |  2 +-
 t/lib-httpd/apache.conf                   |  6 ++--
 t/lib-httpd/apply-one-time-perl.sh        | 27 ---------------
 t/lib-httpd/apply-one-time-script.sh      | 26 +++++++++++++++
 t/lib-t6000.sh                            | 13 ++++----
 t/t0008-ignores.sh                        |  4 +--
 t/t0021-conversion.sh                     | 13 ++++----
 t/t0090-cache-tree.sh                     |  4 +--
 t/t0210-trace2-normal.sh                  | 55 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
 t/t0210/scrub_normal.perl                 | 54 ------------------------------
 t/t0211-trace2-perf.sh                    |  6 ++++
 t/t0610-reftable-basics.sh                |  5 ++-
 t/t0613-reftable-write-options.sh         |  2 +-
 t/t1006-cat-file.sh                       | 16 +++++----
 t/t1007-hash-object.sh                    |  6 ++--
 t/t1010-mktree.sh                         |  4 +--
 t/t1450-fsck.sh                           |  6 ++--
 t/t3300-funny-names.sh                    |  6 ++--
 t/t4013-diff-various.sh                   |  6 ++++
 t/t4014-format-patch.sh                   | 30 ++++++++---------
 t/t4020-diff-external.sh                  |  2 +-
 t/t4029-diff-trailing-space.sh            |  3 +-
 t/t4030-diff-textconv.sh                  |  9 ++---
 t/t4031-diff-rewrite-binary.sh            | 17 ++++------
 t/t4058-diff-duplicates.sh                |  6 ++++
 t/t4103-apply-binary.sh                   |  6 ++--
 t/t4116-apply-reverse.sh                  |  4 +--
 t/t4150-am.sh                             |  8 ++---
 t/t4200-rerere.sh                         |  8 ++---
 t/t4205-log-pretty-formats.sh             |  6 ++--
 t/t4216-log-bloom.sh                      |  8 ++---
 t/t5004-archive-corner-cases.sh           |  6 ++++
 t/t5300-pack-object.sh                    | 10 +++---
 t/t5303-pack-corruption-resilience.sh     |  6 ++--
 t/t5310-pack-bitmaps.sh                   |  2 +-
 t/t5316-pack-delta-depth.sh               | 10 +++---
 t/t5318-commit-graph.sh                   | 12 +++----
 t/t5319-multi-pack-index.sh               | 16 ++++-----
 t/t5324-split-commit-graph.sh             |  2 +-
 t/t5326-multi-pack-bitmaps.sh             |  4 +--
 t/t5328-commit-graph-64bit-time.sh        |  2 +-
 t/t5333-pseudo-merge-bitmaps.sh           | 12 +++----
 t/t5400-send-pack.sh                      |  2 +-
 t/t5410-receive-pack-alternates.sh        |  2 +-
 t/t5503-tagfollow.sh                      |  6 ++++
 t/t5504-fetch-receive-strict.sh           |  2 +-
 t/t5510-fetch.sh                          |  6 ++++
 t/t5532-fetch-proxy.sh                    |  6 ++++
 t/t5534-push-signed.sh                    |  2 +-
 t/t5537-fetch-shallow.sh                  | 15 ++++-----
 t/t5551-http-fetch-smart.sh               |  7 ++++
 t/t5562-http-backend-content-length.sh    |  6 ++++
 t/t5601-clone.sh                          |  4 +--
 t/t5616-partial-clone.sh                  | 46 ++++++++++++++------------
 t/t5701-git-serve.sh                      |  5 ++-
 t/t5702-protocol-v2.sh                    | 21 +++++++-----
 t/t5703-upload-pack-ref-in-want.sh        | 29 ++++++++--------
 t/t5710-promisor-remote-capability.sh     |  6 ++++
 t/t6011-rev-list-with-bad-commit.sh       | 14 +++++---
 t/t6013-rev-list-reverse-parents.sh       | 10 +++---
 t/t6102-rev-list-unexpected-objects.sh    |  6 ++++
 t/t6115-rev-list-du.sh                    |  2 +-
 t/t6300-for-each-ref.sh                   | 15 ++++++---
 t/t7006-pager.sh                          |  6 ++--
 t/t7416-submodule-dash-url.sh             |  3 +-
 t/t7501-commit-basic-functionality.sh     |  6 ++--
 t/t7508-status.sh                         |  2 +-
 t/t7815-grep-binary.sh                    |  9 ++---
 t/t8001-annotate.sh                       |  6 ++++
 t/t8002-blame.sh                          |  8 ++++-
 t/t8006-blame-textconv.sh                 |  2 +-
 t/t8011-blame-split-file.sh               |  6 ++--
 t/t8012-blame-colors.sh                   |  6 ++++
 t/t9137-git-svn-dcommit-clobber-series.sh | 10 +++---
 t/t9350-fast-export.sh                    |  2 +-
 t/t9850-shell.sh                          |  2 +-
 t/test-lib-functions.sh                   | 20 +++--------
 t/test-lib.sh                             | 49 +++++++++++++++++----------
 84 files changed, 471 insertions(+), 373 deletions(-)


---
base-commit: 683c54c999c301c2cd6f715c411407c413b1d84e
change-id: 20250317-b4-pks-t-perlless-138cf94696b8