Re: [Nmh-workers] Development Questions. check Programs. register.

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> > and then a check or distcheck shows up problems from earlier edits.
>
> I kind of thought for efficiency's sake we shouldn't build things that
> we don't need.  It just seems wasteful to me build all of the test
> suite programs when they're not used; I guess the thinking there is
> that it's fine to make developers do a little more work.

OK, I'll add a check-programs target to Makefile.am then so I can do
`make all check-programs' without running all the tests.

> > `make -s' would ideally just show any FAIL, the test summary, and
> > distcheck announcement of a tar file at the end.
>
> I think we're sort of stuck here; the code that generates the test
> harness is done by Automake

I've written to the automake list.

> > but sharing utility memory, string, etc., routines wouldn't seem to
> > have an impact?
>
> Sigh.  We don't really have a library of exported routines.

Well, things like mh_xmalloc() are easy to link with.

> I understand the concept behind unit-tests, but for me at least it was
> easier to test the final programs

Agreed.  (I'm not arguing for unit tests.)

> > I'll try and clean some more of it up though I fear I'm creating
> > ever bigger problems for others to integrate unpushed changes?
>
> Hm.  I think using your own judgement thre is the best you can do.

I've been going for lots of little commits to help bisect.

Poking around etc/gen-ctype-checked.c and the related code, I've found
configure's --enable-assert and turned that on.  There's --enable-debug
too, but that does nothing at the moment?

Back to ctype.h, can we now assume POSIX, the functions may have macros
too that may not evaluate arguments more than once;  existing code
already assumes that.  And tolower(3), for example, returns its argument
unless isalpha() and isupper(), so that doesn't all need checking first
to avoid calling it.

Can the existing buildbots do varying configurations?  Or perhaps just
the nippy Ubuntu one?  --enable-assert={yes,no} would be one thing.  And
CFLAGS -f{,un}signed-char another?  Or is one of the three platforms
already known to be signed?

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy