From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 19570 invoked by alias); 6 Dec 2001 22:24:41 -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 19527 invoked from network); 6 Dec 2001 22:24:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lilac.csi.cam.ac.uk) (131.111.8.44) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 6 Dec 2001 22:24:39 -0000 Received: from student.cusu.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.179.82] helo=kern.srcf.societies.cam.ac.uk ident=mail) by lilac.csi.cam.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.22 #1) id 16C6wO-0006ag-00; Thu, 06 Dec 2001 22:24:28 +0000 Received: from jsm28 (helo=localhost) by kern.srcf.societies.cam.ac.uk with local-esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16C6wN-0005ST-00; Thu, 06 Dec 2001 22:24:27 +0000 Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:32:00 -0000 From: "Joseph S. Myers" X-X-Sender: To: Geert Bosch cc: Zack Weinberg , , Subject: Re: ACATS legal status cleared by FSF In-Reply-To: <4DC29618-EA96-11D5-8627-00039344BF4A@gnat.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-SW-Source: 2001-12/txt/msg00315.txt.bz2 On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Geert Bosch wrote: > 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 have not examined these tests, but for C I would consider it valuable for every constraint from either standard version, and every diagnostic message that the front end can issue, to have at least one test. (Ideally the test suite should aim for high code coverage in the compiler; I haven't tried running in conjunction with gcov to see how far away from this we are.) In general I consider a patch which adds a diagnostic without including a test exercising that code path, or adds a language feature without proper tests for the associated constraints, to be defective. I get the impression from this discussion that these tests represent something similar for Ada - tests of the ways in which code can be defective and diagnostics issued for it - and so would be of similar value. It is just as much a fundamental part of avoiding regressions that bad code remains diagnosed and the messages do not get worse, as that good code continues to compile and code quality does not get worse. -- Joseph S. Myers jsm28@cam.ac.uk