Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Seth Woolley <seth AT tautology.org>]

I think one problem may be with the fact that the alsa spell only compiles
enough to get the selected sound card to work.  I would suggest we have a
testing team of some sorts that could test each spell on the highest
optimization settings and identify the highest optimization that each
spell can be compiled under, and then figure out some way in order to
"block" certain optimization switches to be put in the spell (perhaps in a
file called "RESTRICT").  It would just have a list of compiler options
that are a no-go.  This would allow each spell to have a running catalog,
in a way, of what we know will break it.  Before you submit an update with
restrictions, it would be simple just to test a trial run against previous
restriction to see if they need to be removed.

I suggest perhaps some sort of team handle this?  Maybe a grimoire testing
team?

Rather than having the grimoire gurus burdened with wasting their own cpu
cycles, a team of people with tons to spare can volunteer for it?

Additionally, the testing team can test each sound card in alsa to make
sure they all compile, for example.  There are tons of things the testing
team can do.

This is different than testers of the devel branch.  I propose that the
testing team merely are saying that they will attempt to try out each
submitted spell under high optimizations.  In our spell submission/update
system, we should have a checkmark for quality assurance, where somebody
has vouched to have figured out the highest optimizations the spell can
handle and properly added the correct switches to the RESTRICT file.

Maybe something like this.  Any thoughts?

Maybe giving the grimoire gurus assistant gurus more often or having a
team dedicated to optimization testing is in order.  All I care about is
that the spell compiles or not, not that its stable after compilation :)

But then, I really don't expect too much... volunteer organization and
all... :)  The charm may be in taking risks each time we type "cast" --
like real warlocks.

Speaking of which, why "guru"?  Shouldn't one be called a "warlock"?  Or
is it the alliteration of "grimoire guru"?

Seth

On Sat, 14 Sep 2002, Jeremy Kolb wrote:

> Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 00:59:38 -0500
> From: Jeremy Kolb <jkolb AT brandeis.edu>
> To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [SM-Discuss] alsa change?
>
> hey all, what was the problem with alsa-lib-0.9.0rc3? it casted fine on
> my system.... but rc2 does not...
>