On 7/31/2017 11:12 AM, Oleg Endo wrote:
On Mon, 2017-07-31 at 15:25 +0200, Georg-Johann Lay wrote:
Around 2010, someone who used a code snipped that I published in
a wiki, reported that the code didn't work and hang in an
endless loop. Soon I found out that it was due to some GCC
problem, and I got interested in fixing the compiler so that
it worked with my code.
1 1/2 years later, in 2011, [...]
I could probably write a similar rant. This is the life of a "minority
target programmer". Most development efforts are being done with
primary targets in mind. And as a result, most changes are being
tested only on such targets.
To improve the situation, we'd need a lot more target specific tests
which test for those regressions that you have mentioned. Then of
course somebody has to run all those tests on all those various
targets. I think that's the biggest problem. But still, with a test
case at hand, it's much easier to talk to people who have silently
introduced a regression on some "other" targets. Most of the time they
just don't know.
Long ago, there was a code size regression tester for at least
ARM. Is that still around?
RTEMS also has a number of "minority targets" and we have seen
breakages take a long time to get fixed. Most of our targets
use gcc 7.1.0 but two have to use 4.9.x, one uses 4.8.3, and
one is at 6.3.0.
Cheers,
Oleg
--joel