[LLVMdev] Call for Help: Testing

[Dustin Laurence]

On 04/06/2010 12:38 PM, David Greene wrote:

> ...Either this or
> virtualization would work but both are complicated to set up, raising the
> bar to participate.

Is it?  I don't really know anything about it, but on a whim read just 
enough to know the name of the user-space manager program I needed, 
installed the tools on Fedora 12, created a virtual machine by following 
the on-screen directions, and installing from a Debian 32-bit .iso.  It 
couldn't have been simpler without someone else actually using the mouse 
for me. :-)

> It strikes me that we also have an issue with gcc version.  As demonstrated
> by PR6616, compiler versions matter.  It seems we will need to settle on a
> standard compiler for each release to avoid some of the confusion that can
> delay releases.  What do the buildbots use?  Unfortunately, this again makes
> things more complicated as it requires testers to install specific versions of
> compilers.  Linux distributions don't always make that easy.

Wouldn't the rest of the build environment also matter?

Another nice thing about virtual images is you can have many per actual 
machine, provided you go to the trouble of installing them.  You can 
have one for the current version of every popular Linux distro and BSD 
in existence and run the ones you want to test that day.  That ensures 
you get something close to the build environments people are using, anyway.

> But one step at a time.  Getting more 32-bit Linux testing is the first step.

I have a partner in crime that is much more of an admin than I am.  I'm 
going to see if he has something to donate cycles from, which would be 
more useful than me doing it for several reasons.  He's a partner in the 
real project I intend to rely on LLVM for, so it's a reasonable request.

I know he has a linuxified Playstation, so he might have other fun toys.

Dustin