Re: [Boost-users] Negative effect of expected-to-fail tests in compiler development projects.

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Negative effect of expected-to-fail tests in compiler development projects.
From: Sergey Sprogis (sergey.sprogis_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-12-13 18:00:34

On 12/13/2015 2:13 PM, Steven Watanabe wrote:
> AMDG
>
> On 12/12/2015 08:11 PM, Sergey Sprogis wrote:
>>   I’m wondering how difficult it would be to add  into bjam one option,
>> something like:
>>
>>   -negative_tests=off
>>
>> which will not launch any of negative (expected to fail) tests.
>>
>> For people who use Boost to test newly developed compilers negative
>> tests are  quite a nuisance.
>> I mean those tests which got “compile_fail” and “run_fail” status inside
>> final *.xml file generated at the end of Boost regression testing.
>> [ they are also marked similarly inside Jamfiles ]
>>
>    If you're using the xml files, then
> isn't there enough information to
> filter out these results automatically?

Yes, it's possible, and actually I'm doing that.
And if I'm the only person on this alias who needs it, then of course 
it's not worth the effort to do anything else.

>
>> That’s because newly developed compilers in their early stages of
>> implementation normally have  bugs which produce a lot o false error
>> messages for correct Boost code.
>> Important task here is to extract those messages, to evaluate them, and
>> to prove that they are indeed correct, but  compiler is wrong.
>>
>> And when hundreds of such false error messages are mixing together with
>> thousands of legitimate error messages produced by negative tests (there
>> are > 700  of them in boost.1.59.0, for example) it becomes a
>> non-trivial task to filter them out. So the natural desire is not to
>> launch such tests at all.
>>
>    If you're using the jam output directly,
> you can filter by searching for "...failed"
> or just run the tests a second time, which
> will only attempt to run tests that failed
> the first time.

I think '...failed' contains the number of failed targets which  is not 
always  the same as  number of failed tests.
But actually, for my purpose I need to filter out all compilation errors 
produced by negative tests which are noise  to me..
I also need to calculate total number of positive tests, and how much of 
them failed.
All that can be done using *.xml file, but I do not thing jam output 
allows me to do that accurately.
>> Another, slightly unpleasant effect of negative tests is that they
>> appear during so called “test pass rate” calculations during compiler
>> testing process.
>>
>> Typically managers responsible for compiler development  want to know
>> the progress in terms of what “test pass rate”  produces new compiler
>> for the whole Boost testing or for
>> the testing of some specific libraries. Normally such pass rate  is
>> calculated as the ratio between number of passed tests and the total
>> number of tests.
>> But ideally, tests in those calculations should be correct, so if they
>> fail, it 100% means compiler bugs.
>> And here again, negative tests are not useful, and should be avoided to
>> make calculations more accurate.
>>
>    I'm not sure I follow.  Shouldn't the
> compiler accepting incorrect code also
> be considered a compiler bug?

Yes, it's a compiler bug, but  usually for the vast majority of negative 
tests compiler produces  error messages.
The problem is that those messages are irrelevant for my purpose.
I need to filter them out to be focused only on false error messages 
from positive tests which indicate compiler bug.
My goal is to find compiler bugs, not source code bugs, and I do not 
need negative tests for that.
Concerning compiler bugs related to successful compilation of incorrect 
code.
That type of bugs though important, but are pretty rare, and usually on 
earlier stages of compiler implementations,
they are not first priority.

>
>> On a side note, I think it could be also useful to add such total
>> testing pass rates into the
>> Boost Regression Dashboard, so the quality of every tested compiler
>> could be easy to seen.
>> Much more people  could be interested in looking at such dashboard, I
>> guess.
>>
> In Christ,
> Steven Watanabe
>
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