Testcases in Bugzilla

[Wolfgang Bangerth]

> we still haven't reached a conclusion about the testcases in Bugzilla.

To be quite honest, I think what you suggest won't work. What we put into 
the bug database is just too diverse:
- we have bug reports where just the text of an error message became
  worse than before
- we have bug reports where we get the compiler into an endless loop
- we have reports where compilation takes quadratic instead of linear
  time in the input
- reports with two or more testcases that should do the same but don't
- some other really weird stuff happening.

I can't imagine a method to _automatically_ extract these testcases and do 
something reasonable. If there is one, it would increase the entry level 
for people working in GNATS. We're happy that we recently got quite a 
number of people working on GNATS; that might or might not be due to the 
relatively low barrier (you don't have to know anything about gcc's 
internals) and I wouldn't be happy to increase that by adding more 
procedures one has to follow.

I should say that this shouldn't stop you from coming up with a simple
solution. I think you do a very good job with your hand-extracted
testsuire. But whatever we do here, it should be simple. If it's not, it
might not be worth the trouble: if a bug is fixed and remains so for a
couple of months -- is that a problem?

W.

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Wolfgang Bangerth              email:            bangerth@ices.utexas.edu
                               www: http://www.ices.utexas.edu/~bangerth/