Re: [Boost-build] Future development

From: Brad King (brad.king_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-10-08 09:37:10

Rene Rivera wrote:
> David Abrahams wrote:
>> on Sun Oct 07 2007, Larry Evans <cppljevans-AT-cox-internet.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/06/07 19:08, Douglas Gregor wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>>> Okay. One could certainly make the executables for some tests  
>>>> dependent on the executables of other tests, so if the type_traits  
>>>> tests fail to build then one doesn't build the tests for other  
>>>> libraries that depend on type_traits.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think we could make chain tests based on whether a test  
>>>> *executes* correctly.
>>>>
>>> redflag!
[snip]
> For the longest time we had the problem that the Serialization library 
> would get intermittent failures. The problem was that many of the tests 
> relied on a particular ordering. The "load" tests needed to run after 
> the "save" tests. Then at one point I made some rather ridiculous 
> kludges to BBv1 to order the tests correctly. And now with BBv2 all 
> Robert has to do is add a <dependency>save_test on the load tests and it 
> works swimmingly. So it's not a matter of running tests needlessly. It's 
> a matter reliable testing... again.

FYI, Kitware has funding this year to add parallel test execution
support to CMake/CTest.  This will require inter-dependencies among
tests to be explicitly specified to make sure they execute in the
correct order.  We should be able to use these dependencies also to make
sure dependers do not run if their dependees fail.  Perhaps the
dependers could simply be reported as not run because of missing
dependencies.

-Brad