new automated testing facility now operational

[Geoff Keating]

I am now running a service which automatically and continuously tests
th GCC CVS archive whenever a commit is made, and sends mail to the
people making the commit if a regression is detected.

To allow everyone who contributes to GCC to interpret the results and
fix any problems detected, the test does attempt a bootstrap.
Instead, it builds a cross compiler to the target 'powerpc-eabisim'.
The advantage of this is that no matter what hardware is available to
the contributor, they can always build a simulator and run `make check'
for this target, so there's no excuse for not fixing any problems.

The email sent should be self-explanatory.  I should mention some
things about interpreting it, though:

- The email sent shows the complete list of changes to the ChangeLogs
  since the last successful build.  The service has been running for
  about two weeks now in test mode, and the last successful build was
  on the 22nd, so the email has grown to about 50k.  Sorry.  The easy
  way to fix this is to fix the tree.  (I think the tree was OK for a
  few minutes on the 25th or so, but the test program didn't get a
  chance to run before someone introduced another bug.)

- The rate of change on the GCC tree is so high now that, since a
  build and check takes about two hours, there is no way to test each
  patch individually.  In fact, because of limitations in CVS, it is
  becoming increasingly difficult to work out where each patch starts
  and ends.  So the tester will test all the changes since its last
  run in one batch.  If it detects no changes since its last run, it
  will poll ChangeLog files every 15 minutes and run when it finds a
  change; even then, it's quite likely that there will be more than
  one patch committed in a 15-minute window.  So it may not be your
  patch that causes the problem.

- It's also possible for the checker to check out a half-committed patch.
  This is also a limitation in CVS.  I think this will be very rare.

- It's hosted on sparc-sun-solaris2.6, and is using GCC 2.95.2 to
  build the cross-compiler.

- Yes, it's really a regression.  That part of the tester is quite
  reliable.

The address it sends mail to is the one listed in the ChangeLog.  It
will send mail with a 'From' field like

> From: "GCC regression checker" <geoffk@cygnus.com>

you should sort your mail using the 'GCC regression checker' part of
the string, since eventually I'll get it its own e-mail address.

-- 
- Geoffrey Keating <geoffk@cygnus.com>