Testing patches before push to trunk

Testing patches before push to trunk

[Indu Bhagat]

Hello,

I have some patches in the works which add support for the SFrame format 
in binutils (as,ld,readelf/objdump). A new library is added as a part of 
the patch series: libsframe. libbfd now will depend on libsframe.

The most recent V3 posting is here 
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/binutils/2022-October/123994.html.

As a part of testing, I've regression tested this patch set natively on 
x86_64, aarch64 and i686. Also cross-builds (a variety of powerpc, 
riscv, arm, sparc etc. based targets) on a x86_64 host, and a aarch64 
host were tested with the help of a regression testing script that runs 
the binutils/,gas/,ld/,libctf/,libsframe/ testsuite.

Is there a way I can test the patch series on a wider set of 
platforms/environments and weed out the issues before the patch set is 
integrated ? If not, what other tests are recommended ?

Thanks
Indu

Re: Testing patches before push to trunk

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Indu,

On Wed, 2022-11-02 at 00:05 -0700, Indu Bhagat via Binutils wrote:
> Is there a way I can test the patch series on a wider set of 
> platforms/environments and weed out the issues before the patch set
> is integrated ?

binutils has a try bot on https://builder.sourceware.org/

If you push a try- branch to your users branch the buildbot will pick
it up and run a build on a bunch of different architectures.

https://builder.sourceware.org/buildbot/#/builders?tags=binutils-try

The remote branch should be called users/username/try-something.
So assuming your local branch with the patches to test is called
"frob", you can push it to a users try- branch like:

- git push origin frob:users/ibhagat/try-frob

Then wait for the emails to come in or watch the logs at the above URL.

Note that not all arches are green at the moment, so you need to check
if a failure is because of your new code or was already existing.

Cheers,

Mark

Re: Testing patches before push to trunk

[Hans-Peter Nilsson]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2022, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Indu,
> 
> On Wed, 2022-11-02 at 00:05 -0700, Indu Bhagat via Binutils wrote:
> > Is there a way I can test the patch series on a wider set of 
> > platforms/environments and weed out the issues before the patch set
> > is integrated ?
> 
> binutils has a try bot on https://builder.sourceware.org/
> 
> If you push a try- branch to your users branch the buildbot will pick
> it up and run a build on a bunch of different architectures.
> 
> https://builder.sourceware.org/buildbot/#/builders?tags=binutils-try
> 
> The remote branch should be called users/username/try-something.
> So assuming your local branch with the patches to test is called
> "frob", you can push it to a users try- branch like:
> 
> - git push origin frob:users/ibhagat/try-frob
> 
> Then wait for the emails to come in or watch the logs at the above URL.
> 
> Note that not all arches are green at the moment, so you need to check
> if a failure is because of your new code or was already existing.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark
> 

Cool!  Thanks for doing this.

brgds, H-P

Re: Testing patches before push to trunk

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Indu,

> Is there a way I can test the patch series on a wider set of 
> platforms/environments and weed out the issues before the 
> patch set is integrated ? 

You can always cross-build to more targets.  This is probably
not very useful however unless the patch you are checking is
to generic code.

You can build and test with a toolchain enabled for all targets.
ie:

   <path-to-binutils-sources>/configure --enable-targets=all --enable-64-bit-bfd


> If not, what other tests are recommended ?

Running the gold testsuite is generally a good idea, although
in the particular case of your sframe patch series I doubt if
this will show up any regressions.

If you want to be really thorough then building gdb from the
patched sources and then runnings its testsuite would also be
wise.  Just in case there is a problem with gdb's use of the
BFD library.

Cheers
   Nick