Re: [boost] [test]portability of data test cases and build issues

Subject: Re: [boost] [test]portability of data test cases and build issues
From: Vicente J. Botet Escriba (vicente.botet_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-11-04 18:45:34

Le 04/11/12 10:17, Gennadiy Rozenal a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> I've been working on portability fixes for new features in boost.test. They now
> works fine with gcc 4.6 and 4.7 msvc-10.0 and msvc-11.0. My attempt with clang
> on linux lead to compiler crashing, but I see it passing in regression on
> darwin, so I am not sure on the status. I do still have some issues about
> portability and boost.build:
>
> 1. Boost.Build does not handle correctly target foo with sources residing in
> subdirectory foo under location of Jamfile. I had to rename directory
> boost/libs/test/test/test_datasets into test_datasets_src, because of that.
Hi,

I you to post on the Boost.Build/User/Dev ML when you have issues such 
that ones.

I use to do the following without any issue

           [ run ../example/a_test.cpp ]

Is this what you needed?

>
> 2. How do I tell that I want to pass compilation to gcc in toolset gcc-4.7 only?
> I've tried
> <toolset>gcc-4.7:<cxxflags>-std=c++11
> and
> <toolset>gcc-4.7.2:<cxxflags>-std=c++11
> and either one does not work.
>
> <toolset>gcc:<cxxflags>-std=c++11 does work, but I want to pass different
> options for different versions of gcc.
Wow, I'm really surprised you have troubles with this. You need to 
define your toolsets in the user_config.jam file. I have for example

using gcc : 4.7.1  : /usr/gcc-4.7.1/bin/g++-4.7 ;
using gcc : 4.7.1x : /usr/gcc-4.7.1/bin/g++-4.7 : <cxxflags>-std="c++11" ;

Someone has been requesting the addition of a 'std' feature that gives 
the standard, but I don't think this has been implemented or even retained.
>
> 3. Question: Should I tell *unconditionally* in Boost.Test Jamfile in
> boost/libs/test/build that I want to pass -std=c++11/-std=c++0x depending on a
> version?
Do you want to provide several versions for the same Boost release? If 
yes, I think that each version needs a specific Jamfile. Take a look at 
what Spirit has done in the past.

Anyway, No, I don't think this is the place. This is up to the user to 
compile with whatever compiler she wants. See above. If there is code 
that should not work if a specific c++11 feature is not available just 
try to emulate it, report an #error when the user is using this file, or 
just don't include specific code needing the specific feature.

> If not, how do I test test_dataset target with this option? Also How do
> I disable for configurations which does not support it?
I use to have a config.hpp file that gives some macro stating which 
features are available depending on the compiler/platform.
In the c++ files I just check for these macros and I disable the code 
that would not work.

You can also define a new bjam feature and define the sources you 
include depending on this feature. This is a little bit more complex, 
but allows you to be more precise.
You can take a look at the Jamfile in thread/build which defines a 
feature threadapi.

>
> 4. Issues with regression testers setup?
> If you look here:
> http://www.boost.org/development/tests/trunk/developer/test.html
> You will see that:
> a) clang linux columns are empty. Why is that?
There are some of them for Boost.Thread when the program needs to fail. 
I don't know why.
> b) msvc-11.0 setup is broken because of:
> 'cl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
> operable program or batch file.
Well this is just another broken tester. Don't worry about it, or just 
contact the tester directly or iusing the Boost.Testing ML.
> c) sun setup is broken because of:
> /bin/sh: line 2: CC: not found
This is anew tester that has not yet reached to have any good results.
> Can we fix these?
As I said above, there is a specific list for this purpose. Boost.Testing.
>
> 5. Portability for other compilers.
> I am not quite sure which is lowest version of gcc this feature works. Anyone
> who is interested in making it work with older/different compilers feel free to
> submit patches.
You have not yet said if the new features/files work with c++98 compilers?

For what I can see on the regression page it seems that test_datasets 
and test_tools_test are not quite portable. IMHO, I think that you are 
using without any check C++11 features. There are specific macros in 
Boost.Config that you can use to check if specific features are 
available. Some of them are already available in a protable way in 
Boost, e.g. to avoid

../boost/test/data/monomorphic/fwd.hpp:44:33: error: expected class name
struct is_std_collection : std::false_type {};

you can use

struct is_std_collection : boost::false_type {};

including <boost/type_traits.hpp> instead of <type_traits>

But I guess you know already all that.

I suggest you to use a test file for each feature provided by your 
library. This will let you have a better granularity of what 
specifically is not working with each compiler/platform.

HTH,
Vicente