Re: State of libstdc++ testsuite

[Benjamin Kosnik <bkoz at redhat dot com>]

>My company Siemens Automation and Drives is evaluating  a move to the Gnu
>development tools for one of their embedded systems. Starting with gcc-3.3.1
>(July release) we were able to build successfully an x86-based cross
>compiler and runtime system for a proprietary realtime operating system.

Great. You should also be able to build xcompilers from linux for most
things from mainline (will be 3.4.x) sources. If you do this, then the
testsuite issue will be resolved.

>During the process of evaluation we also used the libstdc++ testsuite which
>comes with the versions gcc-3.3.1 (July prerelease) and gcc-3.3.2 (October
>release). We compiled this testsuite with our cross compiler and run it on
>the embedded target. Some of the tests return with error messages. When I
>tried to look in the various mailing lists for a problem resolution, I
>recognized that actually a different set of tests is used. All test
>directories (e.g., 27_io) have now many subdirectories with a different set
>of test programs.

Right. Most directories have sub-directories now. 

This document refers to the mainline testsuite source, and speaks to the
reasons why current sources have a different structure:

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/test.html

>I wonder why this apparently new version of the testsuite didn't show up
>with the latest major releases from July and October. Is there any plan to
>include the new testsuite in an upcoming release (when?)? Is there a
>tar-file available with the actual testsuite source files or do I need to
>download them via CVS which is a little problem on my windows-based
>environment?

The new, much improved testsuite is going to be released as part of
gcc-3.4.x. If you'd like to get these sources soonish, I suggest you
either use CVS (which you can actually use on windows, search google
"cvs windows")  or download one of the weekly gcc snapshots from a gcc
mirror.

See: 

ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/snapshots

The latest, as of this writing, is 3.4-20031105.

It is true that mainline and the stable branch testsuites have diverged
markedly. Why? Well, mostly because doing nested hierarchies in CVS is a
pretty painful process, and doing this work on two branches was too much
to bear. Also, the gcc-3_3-branch is supposed to be stable, and the
testsuite work happened after 3.3.0 was released, or after this
branchpoint.

-benjamin