Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Axiom trunk failure

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

root <address@hidden> writes:

| > Gosh, I forgot the real thing.  
| > It is there, real this time.
| 
| 2 points,

Thanks for the quick review.

| 
| 1) did you test the patches? did you do a full system erase,
| system checkout, system build, system test? 

* I have not checked in the patch so there is no system checkout to be
  made.  I reckon I was fast in nominating the patch for golden
  branch.  I should have said it is a first cut to see whether the
  first order is correct, e.e.g whether the GCL version I set as cut
  was OK.  Remember one of my questions was:

      Should I be more aggressive than that?


* the only system erase I have to do is that of the build directory
  because the "lndir" procedure I described here

      http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/AxiomSilverBranch
   
  permits build outside of the source directory -- which I do anyway
  because I consider the current scheme not acceptable.  Hopefully,
  the Autoconf work will remove that additional step unnecessary.

| 2) you changed not only the current system (gcl-2.6.8pre) but
| the previous system (gcl-2.6.7). did you test both versions?

Does that mean you consider that only gcl-2.6.8pre should be touched?
That was my key original question I'm interested in having answer for :-)

| i know this seems like such a trivial patch that it "ought" to work
| but remember that you're asking for changes to a system that many
| people you might never meet are using. 

Please Tim, stop lecturing on "ought to work" and assume we all know
take that as a basic working assumption assuming.

| as a matter of policy changes need to be fully tested. 

That requirement is part of the "Preparing and submitting patches" 
section of

      http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/AxiomSilverBranch
   

Yes, I failed to mention on which plateform I have tested the patch,
primarily because I was interested in whether the first order cut is
OK. 

| because you changed gcl-2.6.7 i'll actually have to do a 
| round-trip rebuild of a gcl-2.6.7 system as well as a gcl-2.6.8pre
| system. 

Assume that will be done and clearly stated when I'm about to commit
the changes.

| i do testing every time. and it takes a lot of time.

I know building Axiom currently takes a lot of time -- I did five
builds yesterday, and while the system was building I was able to make
good progress on daytime job projects.  There ought to be
a way of saying "make -jN" and have it work.  Yes, I read the FAQ as
of why it is not possible.  But we should fix it.

| but you'd be amazed at the number of ways things can break.

Tim, I know how much of superstition is at the basis of software
construction even though it should be a rational activity.  So, no,
I'll not be amazed at all :-)

Testing for both versions of GCL are running on x86.


Sourceforge has a compile farm for various platforms.  We should take
advantage of that so that the silver branch get testing, not just by
its developers but also by other means out there.  I'm no Axiom
administrator, so please could you request a nightly build of the
silver branch on the various platforms they offer and have the results
sent to say, address@hidden -- that list would
need to be created.  Please could you ask for that list too?
Yes, that may involve writing a script for sending the build output
but if they accept the requests then I volunteer to write the
script.  Thanks!

-- Gaby