On 2017-07-20 10:09, David Anderson wrote:
On 7/20/2017 12:37 AM, Oliver Bock wrote:
Sorry, but this isn't a sustainable model.
Well, it's sustained us this far.
I'm not so sure about that, at least if "us" should cover more than
SETI. Most major projects that I know of use BOINC server code that is
as outdated as their requirements allow, and do their own development
based on that old version. Ours (E@H) dates back to early 2012,
Rosetta's is way older (2009?), WCG uses the first git migration (late
2012).
Projects are worried first about stability and reliability, then about
features they may need. You certainly don't want to build your project
code - that should reliably manage some 100k machines of some 10k users
that you don't want to alienate - from a branch that every intermediate
half-baked commit of a handful of features that is worked on in parallel
gets committed to. That's what's driving GPUgrid away, and that shows
that - in my understanding of 'sustain' - it DOESN'T sustain.
We could have a server stable branch, as you've suggested, if we could
figure out how to test the server software.
A system as complex as BOINC can only be trusted as a whole by building
up trust from the ground up, i;e; by building trust to its components.
This means that testing the "server software" means and requires testing
its components. Testing, of course, can only mean testing the behavior
compared to a specification (even if the specification isn't written
down explicitly; then the test defines the specification). This, in
turn, means you would better have a specification, at least for each
module and interface, which first should be verified on its own for
correctness and completeness. Then you can write a test
case/program/whatever for this module. Then you can test this module to
conform to your specification.
Basically there is no point in testing a module or a system as long its
(desired) behavior isn't specified.
Best,
Bernd
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