Re: [PATCH 0/6] Allow to run the old testsuite in parallel

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hallo Ralf,

On 22 Aug 2010, at 17:55, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> I've had this patch series half-done in my tree for a long time,
> and have now taken the time to fix the missing bits.

Do you have (or could you easily move) this on a private topic branch
already? If so, please push the topic branch to a public repo to make
it easier for me to test.

> The old testsuite is, well, old, and unloved.  But it also covers
> crucial aspects, so as long as there's no rewrite, we might as well
> enable some parallelism and have a decent log creation mechanism (both
> through Automake 1.11's parallel-tests feature).

Sounds good. As do the benefits to Windows testers that I elided from
the quoted text.

I'd still like to roll the next release in a week or two though.  Do
you think this patch series is stable enough to push just before that
release?  I'm leaning towards holding off until just after the release:
anyone who wants to test that code can easily clone the post-release
head of the master branch... and we don't run the risk of making a
release that blows up for casual users in unforseen ways.  WDYT?

> parallel-tests requires a new Automake for building the Libtool package
> itself.  Users of Libtool macros should still be able to cope with
> Autoconf 2.59 and Automake 1.9.6.  I tested this on GNU/Linux.

So, with a distribution's preinstalled libtool package, we are still
able to work fully with older autotools, and the Automake 1.11.1
requirement is only for running the old testsuite?  Or only for
running the old testsuite in parallel?

> If requiring Automake 1.11.1 is too strict, then it would be possible,
> alternatively, to only enable parallel-tests iff Automake is new enough.
> This would make both code and documentation a bit more complicated, so
> I'm hoping that it won't be necessary.

I'd like to try it out (preferably without extracting the patches
from emails on my laptop, transferring them to the test servers,
and applying them there) before giving the all clear.  But, I think
it is not worth your expending too much more effort on enhancing
this series if my plan to migrate those tests to Autotest comes to
fruition in the next month or two, so if I don't get back with a
review in 72hrs, and if you are confident that we're not opening
ourselves up to a slew of reports from casual early adopters who
have trouble with the altered testsuite, then in principle I have
no problem with merging.

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (address@hidden)

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