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Subject: [boost] TravisCI and Coverall usage policies in Boost
From: Antony Polukhin (antoshkka_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-09-18 04:38:39


Hi,

Motivation.

I'd like to show some useful stuff using the Boost.Variant library as an
example.

Take a look at this link: https://coveralls.io/builds/1224886 It shows
tests coverage and has a nice interface to get info about untested things.
For example:
* if we take a look at this https://coveralls.io/files/293662719 , we'll
see that `polymorphic_get` was not tested for extracting type that is not
in a variant variable
* if we take a look at this https://coveralls.io/files/293662720 we'll see
that swapping of recursive wrappers was not tested

All that stuff was achieved by adding the
https://github.com/apolukhin/variant/blob/travisci/.travis.yml file and
turning a switch at coveralls.io site.

Now let's take a look at the regression tests of variant:
http://www.boost.org/development/tests/master/developer/variant.html .
There we can see a indirect_travisci_tests tester. There's nothing special
about that tester, except the fact that results are gathered using foreign
TravisCI service.
We can integrate foreign service to do regression reporting for us. We can
even make this separately for each of the Boost libraries, triggering test
run on every commit and reporting the results directly to README.md file
(for example https://github.com/apolukhin/Boost.DLL#test-results).

The problem.

A few things make me nervous.

First of all, TravisCI requires some access permissions to the repo. I'm
not a github expert so I'm not 100% sure that this is safe.

Second one, is that there is no policy in Boost about usage of foreign
services like TravisCI and Coveralls.

The questions.

Is is OK to commit to Boost repos .travis.yml files without enabling
TravisCI runs?
Do we need a license note in .travis.yml file?
Can we enable automated testing using TravisCI for a Boost repo?
Can we enable automated tests coverage using Coverall for a Boost repo?

-- 
Best regards,
Antony Polukhin

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