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orca/docs/reference
Neil 58a52a8ce3 test(wsl): guard probes that report failure as a negative answer (#17352)
* test(wsl): guard probes that report failure as a negative answer

A WSL probe that cannot reach its distro returns the same value as one
that asked and got "no". Downstream nothing can tell them apart, so a
distro that was busy for a second reports no git, or no agent sessions,
until relaunch — sticky, silent, and identical to the real thing.

That has shipped three times: preflight CLI probes, the glab auth
fallback (#8941), and listRunningWslDistrosAsync failing closed with no
last-known-good while polled every 2s (PR #17072).

Scan the WSL and preflight probe modules for the shape and hold the
current set in an allowlist that only shrinks. Scoped deliberately: the
same shape appears ~850 times across src/ and is usually correct,
because for most callers a failure really does mean absent. It is only
dangerous where the answer describes a distro.

The guard cannot see the dangerous part — whether the value is later
cached or gates discovery is dataflow, not syntax. It stops a new
swallow site appearing here without someone saying why it is safe to
pin, which is the review that was missing all three times.

* test(wsl): make ratchet failures actionable

A red build must say what to do. Name the offending files, say the
allowlist is where a safe case goes, and — for a stale entry — say the
change is fine and the list just needs to shrink.

* docs(wsl): track the probe failure-semantics reference

docs/** is gitignored with an explicit allowlist, so the reference the
ratchet points contributors to was silently left out of the branch. A
guard whose error message cites a doc that is not in the repo is worse
than no doc.

* test(wsl): catch a swallow whose reason trails the return

The guard only tolerated comments before `return`, so
`return false // ...` slipped past — including the exact snippet the
doc and the test's own docstring use as the canonical example. The doc
asks authors to write down why a swallow is safe, and the natural place
for that sentence is trailing the return, so following the guidance
defeated the guard.

Verified against both shapes: trailing comment and comment on the line
after.
2026-08-30 01:30:25 -07:00
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