Re: automated (or otherwise) tests for graphics code?

[Søren Hauberg]

tor, 16 10 2008 kl. 16:31 -0400, skrev John W. Eaton:
> On 16-Oct-2008, Thomas Weber wrote:
> 
> | On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 01:45:02PM -0400, John W. Eaton wrote:
> | > We seem to be having a lot of regressions in the graphics code
> | > lately, so maybe it is time to start thinking of some way to provide
> | > tests for these functions.  Unfortunately, I don't have any good way
> | > to do automatic tests for most of the graphics functions since the
> | > results are visual.  
> | 
> | Is this the new backend or the gnuplot one?
> | 
> | It seems gnuplot produces identical images (md5sum matches) for
> | identical input. 
> 
> If the code was more or less complete and stable this might work.  But
> at this point, with frequent changes that do affect the output or the
> commands sent to gnuplot, I don't think it will be all that useful to
> take this approach.  We will find ourselves spending a lot of time
> generating new "correct" test results.  Plus, wouldn't this limit all
> of us to using precisely the same version of gnuplot in order to get
> all the tests to pass?

Instead of comparing an md5sum of the output produced by gnuplot, you
could compare an md5sum of the input sent to gnuplot. But as you say, as
long as the code frequently changes this will probably cause more
trouble than it would solve.

Søren
> 
> jwe