# Branches check, test performance, test quality — 8 Oct 2026, cli.sgit.ai > An end-to-end check found that branches did not work. What was fixed behind it, the tests that now cover it, and a review of the test suite's speed and quality. *Source: · generated from the same content as the page, so the two cannot drift. Published from .* --- # Branches check, test performance, test quality — 8 Oct 2026 *CLI team. Done as part of the 0.21.0 release.* ## 1. Branches: broken, now fixed and covered An end-to-end check (create, list, switch in and out, work on a branch, push to it, pull from it, merge either way) found that **branches did not work**: push, pull and fetch looked up the named branch called `current` by name, so work committed on `feature` was pushed to main and the feature ref never reached the server. Fixed, together with everything the check turned up behind it (first push of a new branch, signing keys of new clone branches, switch dropping unpushed commits and tripping a false rewind, switch not fetching, duplicate names, `--from` not checking out, no way to merge a branch) and one bug that was not about branches at all: **every merge commit a pull created was unsigned**, because the pull state carried the key id in a type that turns `-` into `_`. | | Where | Tests | |---|---|---| | Unit, two real clones on the in-memory API | `tests/unit/review/test_Branches__End_To_End.py` | 22 | | Integration, real SG/Send server | `tests/integration/test_Branches_Tags_Integrity__Integration.py` | 5 (branches, tags, format 2, signatures-required, rewind + lease) | | Live dev API, through the CLI | manual run, two clones | create, push, switch, two people on one branch, diverged merge into main | Why the existing tests missed it: the step tests for pull, push and fetch run against fake branch managers whose `get_branch_by_name` returns the main branch whatever is asked; they could not see work going to the wrong branch. The end-to-end tests run the real objects. ## 2. Performance: 70 s → 45 s, all 4,042 unit tests | Change | Effect | |---|---| | Test vaults use a fixed key (`TEST_VAULT_KEY`) instead of a random one | Deriving a vault's keys is two PBKDF2 runs, ~190 ms by design. With one key, the process-level KDF cache makes every test vault after the first per worker nearly free. Each test still has its own directories and its own in-memory server | | Test HTTP servers poll every 20 ms (static server 100 ms) | `shutdown()` waited up to 500 ms per test; 28 tests | | Unit tests no longer reach the internet | 20 tests waited on the live dev server | Checked and left: xdist scheduling (`load`/`loadscope`/`loadfile` within 2 s of each other), collection (4 s), the vault-move test (22 real PBKDF2 runs is what a move does), two timing tests whose subject is the timer itself (retry back-off, idle-socket age). ## 3. Quality **Integration tests run real things.** All 12 files start the real SG/Send User Lambda on a local port (in-memory storage) and nothing in them is mocked. They were all failing locally: `mcp` 2.x breaks `fastapi-mcp` 0.4.0, which the server mounts at startup; CI pins `mcp<2`, the local setup did not. Fixed in CLAUDE.md. 68 integration tests pass in 18 s. **Unit tests are hermetic now.** `tests/unit/conftest.py` sends the default server to a closed local port and fails, by name, any unit test that opens a connection to a non-loopback host. Twenty were doing so: CLI commands on test vaults without a remote fell back to the live dev server, one prompt test only passed because the live server answered, and `push`'s local dirty check built a network client with no server. Production fixes for the last two. **Where the mocking is.** It is concentrated, and it is the part of the suite that hid the branch bug: | | Count | |---|---| | unit test files | 335 (4,042 tests) | | files that monkeypatch sgit_ai internals | 20 (258 patches) | | files with hand-written Fake classes | 4 (37 classes) | | tests named after a source line number | 82 | Almost all of it is in files named `*__Coverage*`, written to reach lines rather than to check behaviour. Recommendation, in order: 1. For new work, prefer the pattern the review tests use: real clones on the in-memory API (`Vault__Test_Env`), built once per class, restored per test (5 ms). 2. Replace the fake-based step tests (`test_Step__Pull/Push/Fetch__Coverage.py`) with workflow tests on real clones; delete the line-number tests whose behaviour another test already covers. 3. Treat a monkeypatch of an sgit_ai method in a unit test as a review flag: it usually means the code needs a seam (a parameter, a field) instead. --- *[Site index for agents](../llms.txt) · [HTML version](https://cli.sgit.ai/articles/branches-and-test-suite-review.html)*