[fluid-dev] Building and stability [was: a new program using FluidSynth]

[Paul Millar]

Hi Josh,

On Tuesday 17 April 2007 11:12, Josh Green wrote:
> As for the crashing problems.  Several windows users have mentioned that
> there are stability/build issues with more recent versions of
> FluidSynth.  I hate the thought that my contributions to FluidSynth have
> actually made it worse in some regards.  It would be nice to get this
> sorted out, so that you could use the most recent version.

I've jotted down some ideas below.  They're all probably obvious and I'm 
afraid I can't contribute any spare time towards implementing any of them (I 
know, "talk is cheap"), but I might be able to help out in other ways.

Automated builds, test suites and regression testing is often a way forward 
with QA.

I've had some experience with automating activity under Linux, so these 
solutions are all Linux-orientated.  There may be some Windows-based ones 
that people with Win-boxes could implement.

Are these MSVC++ build problems also present when building with MinGW?  
Cross-building might be an easy way of checking that the Windows code-base is 
roughly correct.

To really test MSVC++, perhaps the MS compiler could be run under Wine 
(judging from the reports, some versions of MSVC++ may work well enough).  
I'm not familiar with MSVC++, but even if it doesn't have a command-line 
build-project binary the CXTest suite could be used to drive it graphically.

For stability, unit and regression testing may help.  It looks like fluidsynth 
doesn't have any test suite at the moment (unless I missed them).  Adding 
test would require some kind of framework, which is often a royal PITA to 
setup.  But, once the framework is in place, adding new tests is oddly 
satisfying (or is that just me?)

HTH,

Paul.

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