On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 01:36:51 +0000 "Potter, Tim (HPE Linux Support)" <timothy.potter@hpe.com> wrote: > On 7 Apr 2016, at 11:18 AM, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote: > > On Thu, 2016-04-07 at 01:02 +0000, Potter, Tim (HPE Linux Support) > > wrote: > >> On 7 Apr 2016, at 10:52 AM, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> > >> wrote: > >>> Given the low quality and lack of unit tests in many scientific > >>> applications, how confident can we be that the 'old' packages > >>> (that have now built with newer toolchains and libraries) > >>> actually still produce the same results they used to? If we are > >>> not, even that historic value is lost. > >> > >> Full archive rebuilds are done every so often. The switchover to > >> the gcc-5 toolchain > >> was an example and everything was rebuilt at least once during that > >> time. My understanding > >> is that packages are dropped if they don't build in this case, and > >> no-one steps up to fix them > >> within a reasonable (months) period of time. > > > > You are missing the point, which is that while they still build with > > the new toolchain (possibly after a developer without intimate > > knowledge of the program makes a best-effort fix) we don't know that > > they behave the same way. > > OK - good point. I wonder if there is any information about how many > packages run unit tests? It would be interesting to see the data. Not for packages which build and execute unit tests during the build - although failures there cause an FTBFS, so the archived bug history will give some indication of whether the tests are likely to fail with toolchain changes. Clearer records exist at ci.debian.net. > I get the impression that more upstream packages have built-in tests > that can be run as part of dpkg-buildpackage (e.g Python, Perl, Ruby, > Java and Go) but maybe that's just because I've been working in those > environments recently. Not all unit test suites can run during the build. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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