Hello, Yes, I am envisioning automated tests. I've built a limited set of tests for personal projects and for a company I worked in for a while, so I have a rough idea of where to go. I'll certainly look into system calls, seems a sensible place to start. Any advice or pointers you (or anyone else) has would be greatly appreciated. Also, I would quite like to see those fp tests if you would be so kind.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 4:25 PM, erik quanstrom <quans...@quanstro.net>wrote: > On Wed Mar 26 07:11:38 EDT 2014, riddler...@gmail.com wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > I would also be quite interested in helping if people are embarking on > such > > a project. > > > > I'm a Computer Science student and I've been using a raspberry pi trying > to > > learn more about plan 9. Creating regression tests could be a good way > for > > me to poke around the system learning how it works while still > contributing > > something useful to the community. > > i think this could be quite valuable. at a minimum, you will learn alot. > > i assume that you mean automated tests. many things like usb behavior > on unplugging is hard to automate without some special equipment. > > imo, the easiest thing to automate would be the system calls. there > are very few of them. i would first start by checking that they do > reasonable > things with arguments in the text, heap, stack, and various forms of > invalid addresses, especially just above or just below valid addresses. > > it is also pretty straightforward to test a the kernel devices to make sure > they all handle invalid file names/directory names well, deal with bad > input to control files well, etc. > > (an idea that occurs to me while typing this is to have a special > syscallmal > for allocating things with system call lifetime. it allows one to add the > rule > that everything syscallmal'd must be free'd on kernel exit.) > > another area that might not be as easy (as you'll have to dive into some > obtuse stuff) would be floating point. but this would be very helpful, > because > it has been a long time since serious effort was put into this. > floating point should well behaved with the usual operations, > and with standard library functions (and ape, too), with respect to the > usual problem > areas such as overflow, underflow, -0., ±∞, and denormals, with all > fcr (see getfcr(2)) settings, and with all architectures. or at least > amd64, > rpi and something with emulated fp such as the rb. > > run-on sentences 'ᴙ' us. > > i'd be willing to give you some pointers on how to continue. i have some > scripts that i used to iron some of the worst bugs out of fp so that python > could pass some regression tests. > > - erik > >
