From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7676 invoked by alias); 6 Dec 2001 22:12:06 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 7639 invoked from network); 6 Dec 2001 22:12:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO nile.gnat.com) (205.232.38.5) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 6 Dec 2001 22:12:05 -0000 Received: from darwin (DARWIN.GNAT.COM [205.232.38.44]) by nile.gnat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D2D32F28C6; Thu, 6 Dec 2001 17:11:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:24:00 -0000 Subject: Re: ACATS legal status cleared by FSF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v475) Cc: guerby@acm.org, gcc@gcc.gnu.org To: Zack Weinberg From: Geert Bosch In-Reply-To: <20011206194008.GE8267@codesourcery.com> Message-Id: <4DC29618-EA96-11D5-8627-00039344BF4A@gnat.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.475) X-SW-Source: 2001-12/txt/msg00314.txt.bz2 On Thursday, December 6, 2001, at 02:40 , Zack Weinberg wrote: > I disagree in the strongest possible terms. Put the B tests in the > public repository. If you don't, you only make life harder for people > outside of ACT who wish to work on the Ada front end. > > The maintenance work has to be done anyway, and ought to be the > responsibility of the person who makes the change that causes the > tests to regress. If the B tests are run as part of "make check" in > the FSF tree, this will be enforced automatically. I'd like you to first get more familiair with the test suite before making such strong comments. Laurent and I both have a lot of experience with this test suite and do not see much value in running the B tests, whille the cost (in volunteer time) is high. It is virtually impossible for people to "break" these tests, which is why I say they are of no value. Even if people *do* manage to break them (in the hypothetical case that the maintainers would not catch the error before approving), this will not go unnoticed for a long time anyway. In the mean time, the *only* programs affected are programs with fatal errors to start with. I would be surprised if there would even be consensus to run just the executable ACATS tests as part of make check, since this would already double testing time for all contributors. Adding testing requirements is not free, and there needs to be a benefit to it. For most of the executable ACATS tests I think there is a good benefit/cost ratio for the front end, and even for the back end. For that reason I am happy to see Laurent doing the work to get them integrated. For the B tests, adding testing is of near-zero value at a high cost. Zack, I'd like to see very good reasons why you think it is reasonable to significantly increase of required volunteer time to make GNAT changes and that way hinder development and maintenance. -Geert