Re: Other Ada Standards (was Re: SIGada Conference)

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> A compiler is probably not so dangerous as a rocket engine control, but 
> failure to pass validation because some "trivial" change had some subtle 
> problem that the original programmer didn't understand is a) expensive 
> and b) embarrassing to a company's reputation. That's why on important 
> software there is no such thing as a "trivial" change.

I'm a lot less forgiving than you are.  On the first major compiler 
project I worked on, there was a development version of the compiler, 
and a "base" version.  There was a 20 minute validation suite you had to 
pass to add anything to the development version, and the base version 
was owned by a daemon process that bound the development version at 
midnight, then ran the complete regression test suite on it.  If there 
were no errors, this became the new base version.  If there were errors 
repeat as needed.

There was one individual who didn't like to rerun the 20 minute 
validation suite if he found a "small" glitch.  The third time he did 
this, I went to my boss (the department head) and wanted to fire him.  I 
was told that a layoff was coming, and this guy would be the sacrificial 
goat for the department.

I mean, it didn't even require him to hang around for the test to 
complete.  The normal--I'd like to say only, but it was possible to 
circumvent it if several developers had to submit changes as a 
group--means of updating the development version was to submit a 
directory with the new source units using a script.  Twenty minutes 
later (or longer if the system was loaded down), you would get either an 
e-mail telling you the submission succeeded, or a list of the tests that 
failed, with error messages, either compile-time or run-time.  (There 
was also a option to run the whole regression suite.  I almost always 
chose this option if no one was "waiting" for my changes to submit 
something else.)

-- 
                                           Robert I. Eachus

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