Re: Test suite

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,


On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 10:41:16AM -0500, Karl Berry wrote:
> Ideas are easy.

Sure.  But please, let me add a few more ideas.

>   a) dvitype is the generic one, but it generates too big and too
>      unreadable text files.
> 
> I don't have your aversion to dvitype.  Also, there are other
> dvi-to-ascii programs that might be better for our purposes.

We need a program which is installed everywhere, with the same behaviour.
So I guess you are right, dvitype is the best option.

The tarball should distribute ``good'' dvi files.  These would be compared
with the new ones.  Perhaps the suite could contain two methods for this
compare: dvitype and dvips.  But of course, when the test infrastructure
is built, one is enough (probably dvitype).

I hacked gawk.  Arnold Robbins (the maintainer) has a test suite there.
(I'm afraid it doesn't use the automake support for test suites.)

After a ``make check'' failed, the output of failed tests is left there.
Then you can run ``make -C tests diffout'' to see the diffs.
It is very handy.
I think that dvips compare might be handy for this diff, sometimes.
In other cases, dvitype compare is better: eg. if there is only a slight
change in whitespace.

Hope my ideas didn't bothered you too much, I just couldn't resist.

Have a nice day,
        Stepan