On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 7:53 AM, David Woodhouse <dwmw2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 2008-06-10 at 14:47 +0100, Will Newton wrote: >> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:33 PM, David Woodhouse <dwmw2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > On Tue, 2008-06-10 at 14:25 +0100, Will Newton wrote: >> >> Using a kernel compile as a test isn't such a great idea. Stress tests >> >> of that kind are not particularly useful for pinning down bugs - so >> >> your kernel compile failed, what now? Far better to use LTP tests or >> >> similar that are designed to be reproduceable and tunable for your >> >> system. For example I don't think I'll ever be able to self host a >> >> kernel build on a board with only 32Mb of on-board RAM. >> > >> > Actually, cross-building on NFS does tend to find a _lot_ of issues >> > which crop up with board ports; especially PCI arbitration, DMA >> > coherency, cache and MMU issues. LTP often doesn't catch the same >> > problems. >> >> It may trigger a number of bugs, I don't disagree, but as a test it is >> a blunt instrument. > > Yes, it's a blunt instrument, but blunt instruments are often effective. > > I disagree with your claim that using it as a test isn't a good idea. > I would, however, grant you that using it as your _only_ test is a bad > idea :) Just to add my voice to the chorus; I fully agree. Brute force testing is useful. It can expose corner cases that haven't been considered in formal test suites. Cheers, g. -- Grant Likely, B.Sc., P.Eng. Secret Lab Technologies Ltd. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
