Testsuite documentation

[Tim Prince]

The test suites are there for a number of people who aren't in a position to
be patching the compiler; they may well be totally unfamiliar with compiler
internals but simply wishing to assure that they have built a gcc which is
up to snuff.

I've been confused myself on the --enable-languages and where it is meant to
work.  Even if that is used, the LANGUAGES option is useful to avoid
building those components which cause bootstrap to fail; for example, my
primary requirement is to build g77.  If g77 is unable to build as part of
the bootstrap, I don't want to leave it out of the enabled languages, as I
will build it immediately after proceeding as far as possible with a g++
bootstrap, even if I am building for a target where that also fails.  Should
people be required to find out by trial and error that various components of
gcc, such as chill, gcov, protoize, and the like, are not supported on their
target and are not necessarily required to test the correctness of their
build?

java is a good example.  It's not included in testsuite.  There is no need
to build it before running the testsuite.  If that changes, the
documentation should change accordingly.  As a recent post on the cygwin
list pointed out, it's near impossible for the uninitiated to know where to
get the library components needed to run gcj, and so gcj may become more
interesting when it does include a library and a testsuite.  Yes, I had a
working gcj on both cygwin and linux, and I expect to use java on the job
sooner or later, but why make it a stumbling block?

The environment variables which we have been required to set for testsuite
on cygwin, when the gcc builds were working on that target, are:

TCL_LIBRARY=/usr/share/tcl8.0
DEJAGNULIBS=/usr/share/dejagnu

I don't know whether there are other targets for which the necessary
environment settings don't just happen.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerald Pfeifer" <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
To: "Tim Prince" <tprince@computer.org>
Cc: <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: Testsuite documentation


> On Sun, 26 Nov 2000, Tim Prince wrote:
> > I'd suggest mentioning that LANGUAGES='c++ f77 objc gcov' is sufficient
to
> > build all the components which are tested in the standard test suite
>
> Hmm, what's the intention? For, if someone has to verify a patch to
> the backend, she has to bootstrap the entire compiler suite anyway,
> as part of the commit criteria. (And the list above just omits java,
> right?)
>
> Furthermore, isn't LANGUAGES deprecated in favor of --enable-languages
> now?
>
> > Maybe some explanation of what is to be expected of the mangling tests
> > (not clear on that myself), or the environment variable settings
> > expected.
>
> Yes, certainly!
>
> Could someone contribute a bit of documentation on the mangling?
>
> And/or any relevant information on the environment settings that is
> missing from the current page?
>
> Gerald
> --
> Gerald "Jerry" pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/~pfeifer/
>