[M3devel] m3tests, pickles

[Olaf Wagner]

Quoting Mika Nystrom <mika at async.caltech.edu>:

>
> Can I add something tricky to a wish list on regression testing?
> Tricky because I don't know the best way to go about it.
>
> I have spent quite some time with various versions of Modula-3
> tracking down issues with Pickles.  Usually the problem is that
> Pickles aren't transferrable between systems, and it turns out that
> I have included some type, somewhere, that doesn't translate.
> MUTEX is a good example.  First of all it would be very nice if
> such system dependencies were kept out (for instance, don't know
> if it's possible, but something like this...)
>
> TYPE RealMutex = OBJECT END;
>
> TYPE WinMutex = RealMutex OBJECT (* windows fields *) END;
> TYPE PosixMutex = RealMutex OBJECT (* POSIX fields *) END;
>
> TYPE MUTEX = RealMutex;
>
> and of course all that a client sees is MUTEX which is the same
> across systems.
>
> However I realize that what I say above may not be possible or
> practical in all cases.
>
> This brings me to the fact that Pickles are sensitive to certain
> types of bugs (I think), and it would be very nice to check that
> all OS/processor builds of M3 make compatible Pickles, with the
> possible exception of things like MUTEX.  Of course this can't be
> done within a single build...

Sure this can and should be done. We just need reference data for all
pickles and check them in for comparison somewhere below m3tests.
Would you care to add such a test to the m3tests package? The Modula-3
part should could either just output pickles of various structures
and leave the comparison to the existing quake code (simple solution)
or run the comparison itself and return proper error messages and
return codes (preferred solution).

Or have I missed something important that makes this approach
fail?

Of course it will take some time until we've covered all target
platforms with out tinderbox setup.

Olaf
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