How to abort a test?

[Simon Marchi]

Hi!

(x-posting to gdb-patches@ and/or dejagnu@, depending on the point of view)

I am trying to make some improvements in the gdb testsuite, especially when 
testing with
gdbserver on a remote target board.  I'd like to add a check so that if the 
gdbserver
specified by the user does not exist on the remote board, the test will error 
out and
abort.  There is no point in testing anything else after that, we know it will 
fail
(and take a long of time before doing so, because gdb needs to timeout first).

When raising an exception, such as:

  error "The specified gdbserver path does not exist."

I can make it propagate up to where runtest catches it:

  runtest.exp:1474:    if { [catch "uplevel #0 source $test_file_name"] == 1 } {

The test will be aborted, runtest will output a detailed error, but the test 
will still
pass.  Intuitively, I would think that a test that throws an error should 
automatically
be failed or unresolved, since something unexpected happened.

The only option I see right now would be to fix the whole return chain and add 
proper
error handling everywhere, to exit early when an error happens.  However, that 
means
changing tens (hundreds?) of callsites through the testsuite, which is why I'm
looking for alternative solutions first.

My situation is actually very similar to this unanswered stackoverflow 
question, so
bonus points for us if we can answer it at the same time :)

  
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16131622/abort-a-test-in-a-dejagnu-testsuite

It's the first hit when you Google "dejagnu abort test", so I'm sure it would 
help
more people.

Thanks for your help,

Simon