Re: [boost] Regression Tests, Boost.Serialization

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-15 18:45:42

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 22:45:11 +0200, Martin Wille wrote
> Hi,
> 
> Houston, we have a problem.
> 
> The 209 recently added B.S tests apparently result
> in ~20MB binaries each for gcc-3.x compilers. For me
> this means that the nests will need ~20GB more disk
> space. All the other tests with all compilers I'm testing
> for together take ~10GB.
> 
> This is not only slightly unbalanced, it also
> came as a surprise to me when I suddenly saw the
> unexpected disk full errors. Why does this kind
> of things always happen so short before a release?
> 
> Please, everyone, if you do something that will
> have serious impact on the tests being run, please,
> notify the testers in advance. (I still think
> we should have a separate list for regression
> test related stuff, btw.)

Martin -

I think there has been some prior notification on the list that serialization
is going to be an impact.  I don't think we anticipated diskspace as an issue,
   but we did see that serialization was going to impact regression testers. 
The first time Robert and I raised the issue, no one came to the discussion

http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg64471.php

The second time there was an extended discussion under the title:

 [Boost.Test] New testing procedure

I'll let you search for the beginning if you want.  Bottom line was there was
an acknowledgement of enhancements that would help, but no one really has had
time to do anything.

> I had a few GB of disk space left a few days ago.
> Now, I'm unable to run all the tests. I could
> drop one of the gcc-3.4 versions. However, I'd
> still be short by ~10GB after that.

It would be nice if we could drop serialization on compilers that just aren't
going to work.
 
> Is there a way of reducing the number of tests
> in Boost.Serialization? Would it be viable to
> strip the test binaries (thereby losing debug
> information)? Any other suggestions? Compilers
> do drop?

This is where we were hoping to be able to allow regression levels like
'basic' and 'torture' that would provide standard ways of controlling the
number of tests.  But none of this is currently available.

As for what we should do now, it would be nice to have an answer to the
question I posed this morning: is serialization going into 1.32 or are we
cutting it out in the final release:

http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg67299.php

If we are cutting it out the we can just remove it from status bjam now....

Jeff