Re: Alpha release of GNU Parallel 20110505

[Ole Tange]

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Hans Schou <chlor@schou.dk> wrote:
> 2011/5/6 Mag Gam <magawake@gmail.com>:
>> just curious, when you create a new version of Parallel are there any
>> regression tests you run? Currently, I use parallel for a lot of my
>> tasks just want to make sure it still behaves like the old way.
>
> For 'parallel' there is 58 test script which is testing command line
> options and parallel behavior. They are only in the git repo - take a
> copy:
>   git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/parallel.git

Yup. With the small caveat that some of the tests only run on my
personal machine. If you want to adapt the test to be more general (so
they test the same but will work on other's machines) then be my
guest. A few of the tests already do run on others (see: Portable.sh).

> As an example test58.sh is testing the use of ::: mixed with ::::
>
> If a test fail there is no release until it is solved.

Correct.

> If you use parallel in a very odd way, which is not described in the
> manual, you can probably ask Ole to make test for that.

Even more general: Every time I find a bug I try hard to make a small
test that shows this problem, so that if the same problem creeps back
in at a later point, the regression tests will catch that.

Some problems, however, are notriously hard to make a test for: Race
conditions, timing dependant situations, and interative. So those are
not tested automatically.


/Ole