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  • From: David Kowis <dkowis AT shlrm.org>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] gcc 4.0.1 complaints
  • Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:50:39 -0600

Arwed von Merkatz wrote:
> The testing process was several developers using gcc 4.0 full time on
> their machines, filing and fixing bugs as they were encountered. I tried
> getting a list of all tested spells going in the beginning, but that
> didn't work out, so I'm thinking about different solutions for 4.1 right
> now.

IMHO, that's not a very good test process. Now, since we're small, there
may not be anything else we can do, unfortunately :/

>
>> Now, some of you are thinking, "Well durr it's /test/!" But it's still a
>> mainstream grimoire. Lots of people use test in production environments
>> because often the versions in stable/stable-rc are old. Also, IIRC the
>> policy for pulling from devel into test is, "It builds for the
>> developer." IMHO gcc4 doesn't since the above spells don't.
>
> "It builds for the developer" doesn't mean "every possible
> user/dependency of this was tested", that's exactly what test grimoire
> is there for. People using test grimoire in production environments have
> to be aware of that fact. When it's a matter of old versions, that's
> a use for scribbler, use stable or stable-rc and pull the stuff you need
> more recent into a local grimoire with scribbler.
>
> And I hope you realize that building every spell with gcc 4.0 would
> _not_ have been a sufficient test. The real test would have been 'build
> every spell with all combination of options and all combinations of
> options in its depednencies', as quite often there have been failures
> just in combination with specific optional_depends. This gets you to a
> combinatorical explosion that leaves you testing for the next couple of
> universes ;)

It wouldn't be a perfect test, but it would be much more defined than
simply using it on production machines. I agree that there's no way to
test all the possible options and combinations, but at least a single
build of it would be nice. Perhaps keep a fresh system and write
something that casts it and its dependencies, then dispels everything
back to the original setup and then moves on to the next one. Default
config opts are good enough for me.

>
> That being said, I agree that it would be useful to have a better
> coverage of testing for stuff like gcc. Doing a manual list obviously
> doesn't work as people won't update it. So what would be useful is some
> automatic way to extract info like 'those 50 spells were built with gcc
> 4.1.x and cast successfully' from the compile, install and activity
> logs. That way it would be a matter of running that script every now and
> then on your development machine and send the info to the grimoire lead
> to be aggregated into a full list.

Perhaps promethius, or even just a script as I mentioned earlier to
specifically test the gcc upgrade. I would prefer it be a proactive
thing. Not just an extraction on the logs, but an explicit "cast the
grimoire and see if everything builds under gcc4" for example. If that's
what you said in the previous paragraph, then I just missed it :)

Thanks,
--
David Kowis

ISO Team Lead - www.sourcemage.org
Source Mage GNU/Linux

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to
find easier ways to do something.
- Robert Heinlein

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke


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