Integration testing program that internally forks itself

[Vjeran]

We have a program that forks itself in order to do some work
so calling `./program do` internally finds its path using os.Executable and calls `./program do2`

Now when trying to do integration tests program spawns itself and repeats test causing an infinite loop?

Any ideas how to handle it?

[Jan Mercl]

Any recursion that does not have a terminating condition will try to recurse infinitely ;-)

I'm passing a command line flag in such situations - when testing, but the best option depends on the particular use. Elsewhere, in a command that starts a server or talks to the server, I used, for example, an ephemeral @named socket, which nicely handled both the termination condition and the communication and is even safe for concurrent processes competing with each other.

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[Peter Galbavy]

I also use a flag to do this, and I have a local package that then removes this flag (or any of a defined list) before re-execing the binary:

https://github.com/ITRS-Group/cordial/tree/main/pkg/process

https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/itrs-group/cordial/pkg/process#Daemon

It may not be perfect, but it works for my usage.

Peter

[Bryan C. Mills]

Generally I use environment variables for that sort of test, so that the part of the program that constructs the arguments for the program doesn't have to know to pass a special additional argument.

(See, for example, https://cs.opensource.google/go/go/+/master:src/cmd/cover/cover_test.go;l=75-82;drc=dd42a84fb36ade570a7bfaf6fec5df44bbf71500.)