The cmake build system creates a build/ directory and writes config.ini there, along with a tree of symlinks to test_framework and all the individual test files. This symlink breaks the fix in #30714 which resolved those symlinks, causing the TestShell to initialize in the original test directory, where config.ini does not exist.

The fix in this patch is simply not to resolve the symlinks, so TestShell uses:

• /path/to/bitcoin/build/test/config.ini
• /path/to/bitcoin/build/test/cache

Note that any arguments like configfile and cachedir that are passed to setup() will be too late to work around the issue since the constructor TestShell() is invoked with a file path first and that path determines config file and cache location.

Test script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# USAGE: shell.py /path/to/bitcoin/repo

from pathlib import Path
import sys
REPO = Path(sys.argv.pop())
sys.path.insert(0, f"{REPO / 'build' / 'test' / 'functional'}")
from test_framework.test_shell import TestShell

TestShell().setup(num_nodes=1, setup_clean_chain=True)
TestShell().shutdown()

Fails on master:

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/Users/matthewzipkin/Desktop/work/bitcoin/test/config.ini'