Re: [boost] A proposal for superproject structure and testing

Subject: Re: [boost] A proposal for superproject structure and testing
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-12-12 14:24:12

Cox, Michael wrote:
> Does "local testing * of the submodule*"  include running the unit-tests 
> of the the other submodules to see if you've broken anything in someone 
> elses submodule that depends on yours?

No, it generally does not. Perhaps it ought to, in principle, but as 
touching anything in a core (and sometimes not so-core) library triggers a 
recompile of nearly all of Boost, it's just not done, at least as far as I 
know. I can't speak for all maintainers, of course. Perhaps someone does 
test all of Boost on each change. I don't.

> Wow, that's a lot of combinations.  Is that the "official" Boost policy, 
> i.e. is there a link on the web-site I can read this?

I'm not sure if there is official policy on that. We've mostly been relying 
on common sense. What I described was just my experience about what needs to 
be done for a reasonably good local test coverage (today). In the past, it 
helped to include an EDG-based compiler because EDG was the least permissive 
regarding not-entirely-legal C++. Nowadays, g++ is mostly strict enough, but 
soon one would need to include clang as well. And of course there are enough 
differences between C++03 and C++11 (even if the submodule doesn't have 
C++11-specific parts) to warrant testing on both.