test: Fix TestMiniPath unit test on windows

[bobsira]

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[k8s-ci-robot]

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[minikube-bot]

Can one of the admins verify this patch?

[nirs]

This is value from the MINIKUBE_HOME environment variable. Why do we need to fix value set by the user? they should set the right value, and it the path is invalid the minikube command should fail.

If the issue comes from a test using wrong path, we should fix the test, not the code.

[bobsira]

We’re not correcting a bad user value; we’re standardizing a valid path so it has one canonical string form. Windows accepts forward slashes, but raw string comparisons (tests, map keys, logs) treat “C:/Users/Alice/.minikube” and “C:\Users\Alice.minikube” as different. Without normalization this causes flaky tests, cache/key mismatches, and forces every caller to remember to clean paths. Centralizing normalization in MiniPath() creates a consistent invariant (clean, native separators, no trailing slash), reduces maintenance, and doesn’t hide truly invalid paths (bad paths still fail later). So the change solves a real cross‑platform consistency problem, not just a test artifact.

[nirs]

However if we need to fix the value for the user, why we don't need to fix it in this case?

[bobsira]

Good point—the most consistent approach is to canonicalize the final result unconditionally, not just one branch. The branch-specific change was a minimal surgical patch targeting the exact failing scenario (raw env already points at .minikube). A cleaner follow-up is:

func MiniPath() string {
	minikubeHomeEnv := os.Getenv(MinikubeHome)
	var p string
	switch {
	case minikubeHomeEnv == "":
		p = filepath.Join(homedir.HomeDir(), ".minikube")
	case filepath.Base(minikubeHomeEnv) == ".minikube":
		p = minikubeHomeEnv
	default:
		p = filepath.Join(minikubeHomeEnv, ".minikube")
	}
	return filepath.Clean(filepath.FromSlash(p))
}

[bobsira]

@nirs

func TestMiniPath(t *testing.T) {
	var testCases = []struct {
		env, basePath string
	}{
		{"/tmp/.minikube", "/tmp/"},
		{"/tmp/", "/tmp"},
		{"", homedir.HomeDir()},
	}
	for _, tc := range testCases {
		t.Run(tc.env, func(t *testing.T) {
			expectedPath := filepath.Join(tc.basePath, ".minikube")
			t.Setenv(MinikubeHome, tc.env)
			path := MiniPath()
			if path != expectedPath {
				t.Errorf("MiniPath expected to return '%s', but got '%s'", expectedPath, path)
			}
		})
	}
}

Looking at TestMiniPath it fails on Windows because users often set MINIKUBE_HOME with forward slashes (e.g. C:/Users/Alice/.minikube), and the current implementation of MiniPath() returned that raw value unchanged when it already ended in .minikube, while other branches build the path using filepath.Join, which on Windows emits backslashes; the filesystem accepts both, but our test performs a strict string equality, so the expected path (backslashes) and actual path (forward slashes) diverge despite referring to the same directory. By normalizing the chosen path with filepath.Clean(filepath.FromSlash(...)), we enforce one canonical, native-separator, no-trailing-slash representation, eliminating flaky equality failures, preventing subtle cache/map key mismatches, and centralizing path cleanup so every caller gets a consistent result without masking truly invalid paths (bad values still fail later during actual file operations).