gnu tests: limit make jobs to nproc output by kevinburke · Pull Request #13991 · uutils/coreutils

kevinburke · 2026-08-17T17:39:57Z

run-gnu-test.sh passed the nproc executable path after a bare -j,
which enabled unlimited make parallelism and treated the path as a target.

Execute nproc, validate its output, and pass the count as an attached -j
argument. Add an end-to-end regression test for the effective MAKEFLAGS.

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This PR fixes run-gnu-test.sh to correctly limit make parallelism by executing nproc, validating its output, and passing the job count via -j<N>. It also adds a regression test and updates CI to run all Python tests under util/.

Changes:

Execute nproc, validate numeric output, and append -j<JOBS> to MAKEFLAGS in util/run-gnu-test.sh.
Add an end-to-end Python unittest that asserts the effective MAKEFLAGS contains -j<N> and rejects invalid nproc output.
Update GitHub Actions to discover and run all util/test_*.py Python unit tests.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
util/test_run_gnu_test.py	Adds an end-to-end regression test covering `MAKEFLAGS` and invalid `nproc` output behavior.
util/run-gnu-test.sh	Fixes job count handling by executing `nproc`, validating the result, and forming `-j<N>` correctly.
.github/workflows/code-quality.yml	Expands CI to run all Python unit tests in `util/` via unittest discovery.

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 # Use GNU nproc for *BSD
-NPROC=$(command -v ${path_GNU}/src/nproc||command -v nproc)
-MAKEFLAGS="${MAKEFLAGS} -j ${NPROC}"
+NPROC_COMMAND=$(command -v "${path_GNU}/src/nproc" || command -v nproc)


+        return subprocess.run(
+            ["bash", str(RUN_GNU_TEST)],
+            cwd=REPO_ROOT,
+            env=env,
+            capture_output=True,
+            text=True,
+            timeout=10,


+
+    def run_script(self, nproc_output):
+        nproc = self.gnu_dir / "src" / "nproc"
+        nproc.write_text(f"#!/bin/sh\nprintf '%s\\n' '{nproc_output}'\n")


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Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

Suppressed comments (1)

util/run-gnu-test.sh:38

With set -e, the script can exit without a clear error message when neither ${path_GNU}/src/nproc is executable nor nproc exists on PATH (and likewise if invoking nproc itself fails). Consider explicitly selecting an executable path (using -x for the in-tree binary), handling the “not found” case, and checking the nproc exit status so failures are reported deterministically.

NPROC_COMMAND=$(command -v "${path_GNU}/src/nproc" || command -v nproc)
JOBS=$("${NPROC_COMMAND}")

codspeed-hq · 2026-08-17T18:12:16Z

Merging this PR will not alter performance

✅ 350 untouched benchmarks
⏩ 53 skipped benchmarks¹

_{Comparing kevinburke:ci-limit-gnu-test-jobs (e7ba126) with main (dc784af)}

53 benchmarks were skipped, so the baseline results were used instead. If they were deleted from the codebase, click here and archive them to remove them from the performance reports. ↩

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Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

+NPROC_COMMAND=$(command -v "${path_GNU}/src/nproc" || command -v nproc)
+JOBS=$("${NPROC_COMMAND}")
+case "${JOBS}" in
+    '' | 0 | *[!0-9]*)
+        echo "Error: '${NPROC_COMMAND}' returned an invalid job count: '${JOBS}'" >&2
+        exit 1
+        ;;
+esac
+MAKEFLAGS="${MAKEFLAGS:+${MAKEFLAGS} }-j${JOBS}"


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Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

Suppressed comments (1)

util/run-gnu-test.sh:42

The job-count validation rejects 0 but still accepts values like 00/000 (these are effectively zero and would re-enable unlimited make parallelism). Since the intent is to require a positive integer, tighten the check to only allow 1.. and digits.

JOBS=$("${NPROC_COMMAND}")
case "${JOBS}" in
    '' | 0 | *[!0-9]*)
        echo "Error: '${NPROC_COMMAND}' returned an invalid job count: '${JOBS}'" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

github-actions · 2026-08-17T19:08:21Z

GNU testsuite comparison:

Skip an intermittent issue tests/cut/bounded-memory (fails in this run but passes in the 'main' branch)
Skipping an intermittent issue tests/date/date-locale-hour (passes in this run but fails in the 'main' branch)
Skipping an intermittent issue tests/tail/tail-n0f (passes in this run but fails in the 'main' branch)

oech3 · 2026-08-17T19:49:35Z

I don't think it is worth to have 100+ lines just for this. How about removing regression test which is unrelated with actual production?

sylvestre · 2026-08-17T20:22:15Z

+1, please make this shorter

run-gnu-test.sh put the nproc executable path after a bare -j. GNU make treated -j as unlimited parallelism and the path as another target, oversubscribing the test runner. Resolve and execute nproc, reject a missing command or invalid output, and attach the resulting count to -j.

kevinburke · 2026-08-17T21:00:42Z

OK - @oech3 @sylvestre I agree, removed all of the Python tests, there wasn't a good, short way to write them.

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Suppressed comments (2)

util/run-gnu-test.sh:35

util/build-gnu.sh falls back to gnproc on platforms where GNU coreutils are prefixed (e.g., macOS/Homebrew). This updated lookup only checks nproc, so run-gnu-test.sh can now hard-fail in environments that previously had a usable gnproc in PATH.

NPROC_COMMAND=$(command -v "${path_GNU}/src/nproc" || command -v nproc || :)
if [ -z "${NPROC_COMMAND}" ] || [ ! -x "${NPROC_COMMAND}" ]; then
    echo "Error: unable to find an executable nproc command at '${path_GNU}/src/nproc' or in PATH" >&2
    exit 1

util/run-gnu-test.sh:45

The PR description says an end-to-end regression test was added for the effective MAKEFLAGS, but this PR only changes run-gnu-test.sh and there is no test coverage protecting the new -j$(nproc) behavior from regressing (e.g., back to -j <path-to-nproc> or bare -j). Please add an integration test that runs util/run-gnu-test.sh against a minimal fake GNU tree + fake make, and asserts the MAKEFLAGS seen by make includes -j<N> where <N> is the mocked nproc output.

MAKEFLAGS="${MAKEFLAGS:+${MAKEFLAGS} }-j${JOBS}"
export MAKEFLAGS
echo "GNU test make job count: ${JOBS}"

sylvestre · 2026-08-17T21:10:29Z

@kevinburke thanks
please double check in the future before submitting the PR

Copilot AI lite review requested due to automatic review settings August 17, 2026 17:39