[LLVMdev] Call for Help: Testing

[David Greene]

On Tuesday 06 April 2010 14:47:37 Dustin Laurence wrote:
> 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. :-)

Which manager are you using?  I had a heck of a time setting up virt-manager.
Perhaps Fedora does a better job integrating it than Debian.  It wouldn't
surprise me.  I'm glad it's easy somewhere.  :)

> > 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?

To a point, yes, but the compiler is the biggest factor, I think.  I
don't imagine libc would mess things up too often, although a libstdc++
difference (I suspect) did prevent me from seeing a build failure recently.

> 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

Right.

> 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.

I agree.  It would be good to have a list of build systems we want working
for each release, as a guide to testers on what they should set up if 
possible.  I suppose Tanya is the one to decide which platforms are
release critical.

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

Tell him not to update to the latest firmware!  :)

                              -Dave