Both python sites piped a status payload into `python3 - <<'PY'`. The heredoc binds
stdin to the program text, so `json.load(sys.stdin)` saw EOF, the bare `except` fired,
and the parser returned "unknown" for every input — success, pending and failure alike.
"unknown" then reaches a silent `exit 0` arm.
Consequence: the gate-6 queue guard has never made a determination. It exits 0 on every
invocation, on both the gitea and github paths (one shared parser). The pending wait
loop, --require-status and the 124 timeout were all unreachable code. What it still
validated was connectivity — an unresolved token, head sha, or platform could exit 1.
Fix is the one already shipped in the sibling: capture the payload with `payload=$(cat)`
before invoking python, pass it by environment. pr-ci-wait.sh:38 has carried a comment
describing this exact bug — "yielding EOF and returning unknown every time" — along with
the remedy. It was never backported to the sibling the constitution makes mandatory
before every push and merge.
Adds test-ci-queue-wait-parse.sh, enumerated in test:framework-shell. Every assertion is
on the RETURNED STATE STRING; a suite asserting only rc=0 passes against the broken build,
which is how this survived. Verified by mutation: against the pre-fix wrapper the suite
fails 10 of 14, and the four that pass are the four for which passing is correct (the
undecodable-input control, the unknown-vocabulary case, and both needle halves).
The needle scans with heredoc semantics rather than matching text. `json.load(sys.stdin)`
is correct under `python3 -c`, where the program comes from argv and stdin really is the
payload — ci-queue-wait.sh uses that form legitimately in gitea_get_branch_head_sha. A
flat grep flags that innocent site; the scanner names only the two defective ones.
Out of scope, deliberately, and recorded on #1019: token-in-argv (ps-visible) and the
hardcoded BRANCH="main". Bundling them would make a safety-critical parse fix harder to
review.
Refs #1019
Jason Woltje
jason.woltjeandMos