From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,30a9bb3017fa58dd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,959627a08fbc77c5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: GNAT versions ( was :Ada compiler for PC?) Date: 1999/04/25 Message-ID: <7fv7te$6fa$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 470669637 References: <7fndu7$im4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7fqld6$htu$1@nnrp1.dej <1999Apr23.172908.1@eisner> <7frqmj$bg6$1@mulga.cs.mu.oz.au> <7ftfj4$vln$1@Jupiter.mcs.net> <7fud3l$hqi$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x17.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Apr 25 14:13:04 1999 GMT Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-04-25T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Russ Allbery wrote: > In gnu.misc.discuss, Robert Dewar > writes: <> > It makes a great deal of sense for there to be a > "traditional" software support company associated with a > free compiler effort that can take bug reports and test > code from companies and other sources and perform > regression tests against the free source base using that > information, even if the test code can't be > redistributed. We certainly regard our test suite (now many millions of lines long spreading out over nearly 6000 directories, and close to a hundred thousand files) as a critical aid in our quality control procedures. Other companies undoubtedly have their own suites. Often this code is very fiercely protected, and we routinely sign non-disclosure agreements to get it. A useful, but massive task, would be to sanitize this test suite, by extracting the tests that are not subject to non-disclosure (since this is the default for us, it would take a large effort of contacting users etc), and creating sanitized versions of bugs in proprietary code. That could result in a useful freely available test. But I would estimate that several person years of work is required for this, and we just don't have the resources. One very important point for us is that we also have access to the Digital test suite from their extensively used Ada 83 product (this includes basically all the bugs that DEC ever ran into plus a number of really diabolical complex purpose written tests [the ACT test suite also includes hundreds of our own purpose-written tests, generally when we add a new feature, we add a test to our test suite]. In practice we find that the trio working together (the ACVC tests, the ACT tests, and the DEC test suite) are complementary, very often a new version of the compiler passes 2 out of 3 of these tests! We actually use the ACT regression suite very aggressively. Our internal procedures allow anyone to checkin modifications to one of the standard GNAT files, but *only* after running the regression suite. This suite has been run nearly ten thousand times in the last couple of years, and we have found this a very effective way of controlling development and making sure that regressions are not introduced. Then each night we build on all targets, and run the ACVC and DEC test suites. In any case we are ahead in the Ada community in having at least one freely available comprehensive test suite, the ACVC tests, and anyone for example doing their own fiddling with GNAT should most CERTAINLY be running the ACVC tests as one good step to making sure they are not introducing regressions. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own