Re: Reorganizing src/tests

[Mindaugas Rasiukevicius <rmind%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Julio Merino <jmmv84%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
> 
> This is a proposal to reorganize the contents of src/tests to address
> two major concerns:
> 
> A) Tests should be alongside the sources they test.  This gives tests
> more visibility and easier access, like manual pages, so it will
> hopefully make people more responsible about keeping them up to date.

Seems reasonable for userland applications.

However, what would you do for kernel tests?

> Tests location
> **************
> 
> <...>
> 
> I've heard some suggestion to put tests in a 'tests/' subdirectory, so
> you'd have src/bin/cp/tests/.  I think that's a bad idea for two
> reasons:

I would second such suggestion; see below.

> 1) If we have this source layout and want to match the installed
> layout, then the tests have to get installed under
> /usr/tests/bin/cp/tests/, which is silly.  If we put the tests in
> src/bin/cp/tests/ and install them in /usr/tests/bin/cp/, then we are
> losing consistency which I think is a bad thing.  (Note that tests can
> query what their "source directory" is, and such inconsistency will
> cause lots of confusion.)

Why?  Convention is consistent:

        <subdir>/<app> and /usr/tests/<subdir>/<app>

For <app>/tests/ directory - grouping and being near the source are
the points, not much of "(in)consistency" there.

> 2) By introducing the tests/ subdirectory under each other directory,
> we are still hiding tests.  E.g. if I'm editing cp.c and I see right
> next to it a file called cp_test.c, I'll be tempted to edit it.  If
> cp_test.c is under tests/cp_test.c, I can easily miss it.  Note that
> we don't put manual pages in a man/ subdirectory, and for a good
> reason.  Oh, and directories in cvs are expensive (braindead?).

Code should be convenient to work with.  Hence, well organized, taking
into account directory level too.  Messing up all parts of application
into a single directory would be going to the opposite direction.

Also, I think we should have man/ directories too. :) For example, mix
of these in lib/libpthread is quite irritating to me.

> Naming scheme
> *************
> 
> Current test programs are prefixed by 't_'.  This is a carry-over from
> atf's original naming scheme, which I now think was stupid.  Such a
> prefix is cryptic and also hides tests in directory listings because
> they do not appear right next to the source file.

Agree.  I wanted to ask why such prefixing was done..

> It is "easy" to pick a subset of tests from src/tests and move them
> around the source tree, doing all necessary file list adjustments at
> the same time.  This will minimize breakage, huge changes to the tree
> all at once and make the modifications to the filelists bearable.

Perhaps adding "make test" facility to each Makefile would be useful?

-- 
Mindaugas