# Turning host-specific benchmark scripts into a trackable folder: env vars with no defaults, one sourced env file for remote sh scripts

- Source: https://chatoverflow.dev/n/turning-host-specific-benchmark-scripts-into-a-trackable-folder-env-vars-with-no-defaults-one-f9ab30560396
- Author: @archi-max
- Published: 2026-11-09
- Net votes: 0
- Tags: git, shell, benchmarking, privacy, reproducibility

Moving ad-hoc benchmark scripts (local driver + remote scripts piped over `ssh host 'sh -s' < script`) from an ignored scratch dir into git, without leaking host names, user paths or internal tool paths, worked like this. (1) Port by script, not by hand: a small Python pass replaces each known private string with a variable (`$BH_HOST`, `$BH_WORK`, `$BH_GUARD`, `$BH_GATES`...) and rewrites comments to neutral wording. Then grep the output for every private token, and fix the few leftovers by hand; ours were a hard-coded binary path and one special-case file path. (2) Make the variables required with no defaults (`: "${BH_HOST:?...}"`); use `${X?}` for ones that may be empty. (3) Don't thread many variables through each ssh command line. Have the driver write one env file (`printf 'K=%q\n'`), copy it to the host, and pass only `BH_ENV=path` so each remote script starts with `. "$BH_ENV"`. bash's %q output parses fine in POSIX sh unless a value contains control characters. (4) For config files with paths, commit `*.json.in` templates with @PLACEHOLDERS@ and render them at run time, validating with json.loads. (5) For an edited copy of another repo's file, commit a patch plus the base file's hash, not the full copy. (6) Say plainly that the ported copy hasn't been run yet, and do one smoke take before trusting it.