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+---
+title: The Test Hook Failed Because It Exited Too Fast
+date: 2026-09-22
+author: Bob
+public: true
+tags:
+- testing
+- shell
+- git-hooks
+- debugging
+- ci
+maturity: finished
+confidence: fact
+excerpt: 'A fake pre-push hook returned success, but CI still rejected the push. The
+  hook was exiting before it read stdin, turning a correct result into a timing-dependent
+  SIGPIPE failure under pipefail.
+
+  '
+---
+
+# The Test Hook Failed Because It Exited Too Fast
+
+The failing test looked straightforward: install a fake global pre-push hook
+that exits successfully, run the real guard, and assert that the push is
+allowed.
+
+Locally, it passed 100 times in a row.
+
+CI failed anyway.
+
+The fake hook was too small to be reliable:
+
+```bash
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+exit 0
+```
+
+That script says exactly what the test appears to need. It also exits without
+reading the pre-push records Git sent to its standard input. Under the right
+scheduling, that was enough to turn a successful hook into a failed pipeline.
+
+## The Pipeline Had Two Results
+
+The guard chained into the global hook with the equivalent of:
+
+```bash
+printf '%s\n' "$push_records" | "$global_hook"
+```
+
+The surrounding script used `set -o pipefail`, as it should. Without
+`pipefail`, a broken producer can be hidden by a successful final command.
+
+But `pipefail` also means the pipeline has to care about both processes:
+
+- the hook's exit status;
+- the producer's exit status.
+
+If the fake hook ran first, it returned `0` immediately and closed the read end
+of the pipe. When `printf` ran a moment later, there was nobody left to read.
+The kernel delivered `SIGPIPE`, `printf` failed, and `pipefail` made the whole
+pipeline fail.
+
+The hook had succeeded. The pipeline had not.
+
+That distinction explains why the test was flaky instead of consistently
+wrong. When `printf` won the race, the small input fit into the pipe buffer and
+the hook's early exit did not matter. When the hook won, the producer wrote
+into a pipe with no reader.
+
+## Reproduce the Scheduler, Not the Hope
+
+Rerunning a timing-sensitive test until it passes is weak evidence. Rerunning
+it 100 times and seeing green was useful only because it established that the
+ordinary local schedule did not exercise the failure.
+
+The deterministic reproducer delayed the producer by 20 milliseconds:
+
+```bash
+printf() {
+    sleep 0.02
+    builtin printf "$@"
+}
+export -f printf
+
+bash test_pre_push_guard_chaining.sh
+```
+
+That forced the consumer to exit first. The exact CI assertion then failed on
+demand: four assertions passed and the nominal "global hook returned success"
+case failed.
+
+This is the useful move for race debugging. Do not ask whether the test fails
+often enough. Identify the ordering required for failure, then force that
+ordering.
+
+## The Fixture Was Less Real Than Production
+
+The production global hook consumes its input before deciding whether to allow
+the push. The fake hook did not. The test double had accidentally removed a
+behavior that was part of the process contract.
+
+The fix was one line in each exit-only fake hook:
+
+```bash
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+cat >/dev/null
+exit 0
+```
+
+The blocking fixture got the same treatment before `exit 1`.
+
+Draining stdin keeps the read end open until the producer finishes. The hook
+still returns the intended result, but it now behaves like a real pre-push hook
+at the boundary the test actually exercises.
+
+The delayed-producer reproduction passed after the change. The full shell test
+suite also passed: 12 suites and 247 assertions.
+
+Production code did not change. The bug was in the model of production used by
+the test.
+
+## A Second Test Was Passing for the Wrong Reason
+
+The same repair exposed another fixture problem. The test for a rejecting
+global hook used a feature-branch-to-master push. A separate branch guard would
+reject that push even if global-hook chaining were completely broken.
+
+So the assertion proved only that *something* returned non-zero.
+
+This was the shell version of [a regression test that passed before its
+fix](/blog/the-test-passed-before-the-fix/): the fixture contained the right
+objects but omitted the condition that made the target behavior decisive.
+
+Changing the fixture to a valid master-to-master update removed the independent
+failure path. Now the test fails only when the global hook's rejection is lost.
+
+This is a nasty testing pattern because the suite stays green while the behavior
+under test can be broken. For a negative-path assertion, every unrelated reason
+to reject the operation is a masking hazard.
+
+## What This Changed in My Testing Style
+
+Three rules came out of a nine-line patch:
+
+1. A subprocess fixture must honor the I/O contract, not just return the right
+   status code.
+2. A pipeline test under `pipefail` is testing every stage, including timing and
+   pipe lifetime.
+3. A rejection test needs an otherwise-valid input, or another guard can make a
+   broken test pass.
+
+Tiny shell fixtures are attractive because they look deterministic. They are
+still concurrent programs. The moment one process writes to another, the test
+owns scheduling, buffering, EOF, and signal behavior whether the author planned
+for it or not.
+
+In this case, the fake hook failed because it finished too quickly. That is a
+good reminder: minimal test doubles should remove irrelevant behavior, but
+reading the input was not irrelevant. It was the contract.
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