CodingGuidelines: document a shell that "fails" "VAR=VAL shell_func"

Over the years, we accumulated the community wisdom to avoid the
common "one-short export" construct for shell functions, but seem to
have lost on which exact platform it is known to fail.  Now during
an investigation on a breakage for a recent topic, we found one
example of failing shell.  Let's document that.

This does *not* mean that we can freely start using the construct
once Ubuntu 20.04 is retired.  But it does mean that we cannot use
the construct until Ubuntu 20.04 is fully retired from the machines
that matter.  Moreover, posix explicitly says that the behaviour for
the construct is unspecified.

Helped-by: Kyle Lippincott <spectral@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
index 1d92b2da03e8ca4f6f562ed55e2a6d9199b592c3..52afb2725f240dac4007e78d2408bec54395f138 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
+++ b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
@@ -204,6 +204,33 @@ For shell scripts specifically (not exhaustive):
        local variable="$value"
        local variable="$(command args)"
 
+ - The common construct
+
+       VAR=VAL command args
+
+   to temporarily set and export environment variable VAR only while
+   "command args" is running is handy, but this triggers an
+   unspecified behaviour according to POSIX when used for a command
+   that is not an external command (like shell functions).  Indeed,
+   dash 0.5.10.2-6 on Ubuntu 20.04, /bin/sh on FreeBSD 13, and AT&T
+   ksh all make a temporary assignment without exporting the variable,
+   in such a case.  As it does not work portably across shells, do not
+   use this syntax for shell functions.  A common workaround is to do
+   an explicit export in a subshell, like so:
+
+       (incorrect)
+       VAR=VAL func args
+
+       (correct)
+       (
+               VAR=VAL &&
+               export VAR &&
+               func args
+       )
+
+   but be careful that the effect "func" makes to the variables in the
+   current shell will be lost across the subshell boundary.
+
  - Use octal escape sequences (e.g. "\302\242"), not hexadecimal (e.g.
    "\xc2\xa2") in printf format strings, since hexadecimal escape
    sequences are not portable.