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Re: QMTest and the G++ testsuite
On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 04:35:49PM -0700, Mark Mitchell wrote:
>
> > And how about say the GDB testsuite, in which it may be necessary to
> > run GDB on one machine, compile one or more source files on another,
> > connect to a board and upload the program to it using rcp, NFS, tftp,
> > kermit or other board-specific mechanisms, and then issue commands to
> > gdb and verify that they had the correct effect on the program?
>
> All of these things can be done. If you are going to make me replace
> *all* DejaGNU testsuites in existence in a single go, before considering
> moving to a new tool, that will be too much work.
>
> My goal is to get the process started -- I've offerred to do what it
> takes for GCC. If nobody's interested enough to move on to GDB, well,
> that will be that.
>
> You're right to focus on the costs and benefits. I just think you've
> missed some of the benefits. :-)
The reason my interest wasn't fired up over QMTest is that it's too
specific to the sort of unit testing which GCC uses. DejaGNU may not
be the perfect tool for an input-output commandline tool like GCC. GDB
is a very different story; its testsuite contains thousands upon
thousands of lines of TCL. It's not ideal, but the model QMTest offers
wouldn't be any real help. We'd probably end up having to convert all
the TCL to Python; and while Python may be a better language for that
it would be a brutally gargantuan task. Sensational language intended,
having spent lots of my time on said testsuite.
Unit testing may be better in QMTest's model but do you have any
comment on how it will cope with interactive testing? Without using
expect or something like it, CAN it cope with interactive testing?
> 4. Active development towards new features that will be of use;
> historical storage and display of results, for example.
DejaGNU -is- actively maintained; just the copy in sourceware's
repositories hasn't been. I believe they were synched recently. For
instance, someone contributed XML formatting to DejaGNU a month or so
ago.
--
Daniel Jacobowitz Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Monta Vista Software Debian Security Team