[gs-devel] Packaging test files with Ghostscript

[rillian]

On Tuesday, April 16, 2002, at 03:28 PM, L. Peter Deutsch wrote:

> Currently, the standard Ghostscript release includes about a dozen 
> example
> files, but it does not include any files intended specifically for 
> testing
> (regression or otherwise).  We (Aladdin, Artifex, and artofcode) have a
> large number of files that we use for testing, many of which are freely
> redistributable.  It would clearly be helpful to Ghostscript developers 
> at
> large if those files were made available.  What do you think should be 
> done
> about this?

I think this is an excellent idea. Nelson Beebe has suggested we add a 
'make check' target (as per gnu guidelines) and this is exactly the sort 
of thing that should include.

I'd been thinking about including a small test database for all the 
example files, so 'make check' could call run_regressions with those to 
give some basic verification that things are working.

> 	Make them available separately by FTP?
>
> 	Make them available on the Ghostscript CVS, but don't bundle them in
> 	the release?  (They add up to hundreds of megabytes)?

Like James, I'd vote for both of the above, with the ftp version updated 
periodically from cvs. CVS will be much more convenient to update from 
as we add files, but ftp will be helpful to users who just want to make 
a comprehensive test of their installation. In that case it would make 
sense to also distribute the md5sum database for particular releases for 
comparison.

So ideally, the regression suite could be made to handle multiple file 
sets and databases.  That would also make it easy to work with 
sub-groups of files and private collections.

In short, "Yes please!" :-)

  -r