Re: [boost] Bug-fix volunteers: risks, downsides?

Subject: Re: [boost] Bug-fix volunteers: risks, downsides?
From: Jim Bell (Jim_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-11-04 09:39:32

On 1:59 PM, Robert Ramey wrote:
> Jim Bell wrote:
>> On 1:59 PM, David Abrahams wrote:
>>> At Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:16:37 -0500,
>>> Jim Bell wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> Thanks! That does sound much easier. I didn't see that anywhere in
>>>> the docs.
>>> That's a cryin' shame.  Everyone seems to think they need to generate
>>> HTML, etc. etc. in order to run the tests, when all you need is bjam.
>> [...]
> Perfect time to insert a plug for my personal method.  To test a specific
> library (e.g. serialization)
>
> a) cd to ../lib/serialization/test
> b) ../../../tools/regression/src/library_test.sh (or 
> ..\..\..\library_test.bat)
>
> And you will be rewarded with and HTML table in the 
> ../libs/serialization/test directory
> which has all your test results for all platforms and combinations. Each 
> time
> you rerun the tests, the column is updated.  Each time you run tests
> with a new set of attributes (compiler, os, variant, etc) you get a new
> column added to the table.

You know, I came across this not long ago, but it had a few problems too...

* You have to manually (albeit trivially) hack
tools/regression/build/Jamroot.jam to get library_status to build.
* Doc discrepancy: output files are in the <compiler>/release dir, not
dist/bin
* Doc discrepancy: library_test.bat (and .sh) are in a different dir.
* library_status was hanging or running away on an empty bjam.log (can't
find this in my notes so I don't remember the exact symptoms--sorry!)
* I was trying to use it with boost built with a different '--build-dir'
argument (a directory outside boost's root), and it didn't play well. I
looked at --locate-root but couldn't bridge the gap. (The '--echo'
parameter was very helpful.)
* Win32 seemed less supported than linux (though I can run bash under
win32, many can't).

So I decided it wasn't maintained.

And that bjam was, indeed, not meant to be run without help.

I'd love to see this work for the view it gives, but I don't mind
looking through a boost log either if I'm looking for a specific test
result.