Re: GerH source distro at hebbut.net: HOW TO compile/compare/merge for Bill et al

On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 01:24:46PM -0400, Bill Y wrote:
> However- how can we test the system if big chunks of it are optional,
> unless the test system itself gets dynamically reconfigured to only
> test things that ought to be there?

yes, that's usual for many apps that offer configurability and provide a
(compile time) test suite.

> This sort of complication is why conditionalizing builds is not something
> I enjoy.

but it helps to design better tests and better sort out problems. Hopely.
The current case of NN blowing up test run time is one such case.

> I am also unconvinced that there is very much savings in the idea of 
> leaving out some classifiers.  The binaries just aren't that big

think of openssl, ssh: you choose which cypher you want in - no sense to 
include IDEA if you know you won't ever use it; think of Linux kernel, no
sense to compile in VIA chipset support for the kernel for your Inte chipset 
notebook, and so on - it's the general good practice of keeping things
as modular as possible. Un- needed/wanted code may undermine stability 
and/or security of the installed binary, beside small or big size/startup
penalties, for no good reasons.

>     And megatest.sh should skip those excluded.
>     Better yet, megatest.sh should be splitted in eg. 
>     - regex_test.sh
>     - ...
...
> I tried that once.  What I ended up with was lots and lots of little 
> files that were very hard to maintain.  In short, the testability
> got worse and maintainability got MUCH WORSE.

well, I realized that current test suite is already as I described, except 
that we dont' have .sh but .crm scriptlets.
What's missing is the per-test timing and the conditional run logic.
It'd be fairly easy, if crm -h would say which classifiers/modules are 
available, eg:


!trap "rm -f _test_block.sh"  1 2 3 4 8 9 11 13 15
...
!if ./crm114 -h | grep -w SVM; then
!  cat <<__F > _test_block.sh
!<svm test block>
!__F
!  time  -f "SVM: real %e  user %U  sys %S" ash _test_block.sh
!  rm -f _test_block.sh
!fi

(in a portable way, of course)


-- 
paolo

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