Building & Testing the Git Init Script: Headless, Interactive, Scaffolding

By IT-Journey Team

Hands-on quest to build, extend, and test `git_init.sh` — an interactive and headless repo initializer with programmatic scaffolding.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

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Table of Contents

The Challenge: Safe automation without surprises

You have a powerful repository initializer — scripts/git_init.sh — that supports interactive prompts and programmatic --headless invocations. This quest will guide you through validating the script’s behavior, adding tests, and ensuring it behaves well in CI.

Why this matters:

• Scripts are often used in automation and CI; they must behave predictably and be testable.
• Headless behavior must be non-destructive and reliable; interactive commands can’t be used in CI loops.
• Creating files via programmatic scaffolding must be done with a clear contract and test coverage.

Objectives

• Verify script syntax with bash -n and lint with shellcheck.
• Add Bats tests to confirm --headless operations do not push.
• Ensure easy to run --no-push for local tests.
• Add CI step instructions for running tests.

Tests and Tools

We suggest two layers of tests:

1. Unit-ish validations using local filesystem checks via bats.
2. Linting static validation with shellcheck.

Example Bats Test (save in tests/bats/test_headless.bats)

#!/usr/bin/env bats

setup() {
  TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
  cd "$TMPDIR"
}

teardown() {
  rm -rf "$TMPDIR"
}

@test "headless mode creates a repo and does not push" {
  run bash /path/to/scripts/git_init.sh --headless -n sample-test --no-push
  [ "$status" -eq 0 ]
  [ -d "$HOME/github/sample-test/.git" ]
}

ShellCheck linting

Install with brew install shellcheck on macOS and run shellcheck scripts/git_init.sh.

Syntax check

Use bash -n scripts/git_init.sh to detect syntax issues early.

Try it locally

1. Syntax check

bash -n scripts/git_init.sh

1. Run headless mode locally without pushing

bash scripts/git_init.sh --headless -n test-quest-sample --no-push --gitignore python,macos --scaffold python

1. Run Bats tests

# install bats-core
brew install bats-core
bats tests/bats

1. Run ShellCheck

brew install shellcheck
shellcheck scripts/git_init.sh

Acceptance Criteria

• bash -n returns no error
• shellcheck returns no major errors
• bats tests/bats/test_headless.bats returns pass for headless creation
• --gitignore creates a .gitignore file when requested
• --scaffold python creates src and tests
• --dry-run prints operations and does not create files or push

Next Steps (Optional)

• Try --dry-run to preview changes without applying them.
• Create a GitHub Actions job that installs bats and shellcheck and runs tests on PRs.

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Complete this quest to prove you can safely add features to a script and make it testable in automation.

Good luck! 🛠️