Hi Luc, On 20 August 2017 at 01:08, Luc Van Oostenryck <luc.vanoostenryck@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Dibyendu Majumdar > <mobile@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Yes. I have a growing set of tests but I only check the final result >> is correct - i.e. the code can be run (both with and without >> simplifications) and will produce expected results. > > While I'm all in favour of such tests, I also think that at the current > stage of sparse's development, such tests are not what we > need because: > 1) to be able to run/execute the code you need a whole machinery > we don't have yet > 2) they are dependent on implementation details, kinda architecture/ > machine specific > 3) they are dependent on the correctness of the backend used > 4) they are dependent on run-time support (like printf() > implementation, for example. > 4) they don't help at all to debug > > So, this kind of tests makes a lot of sense to you because you're > developing a backend. They will certainly be useful later if/when > sparse will have a backend. But currently, small, specific, more > unit-like tests are much more useful to me. > I think you are raising a deeply philosophical issue. I firmly believe all tests are good and needed, and take the pragmatic view that I will use whatever tests I can lay my hands on. Sure we want unit tests as these help debug problems. But these need to be written by whoever is developing a feature or enhancement. Perhaps Sparse should adopt the contribution policy that no changes should be accepted without accompanying unit tests. Regards Dibyendu -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-sparse" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
