Hi there, (We had a small exchange via private email with Lucas and he suggested we continue the discussion on debian-qa@, hence full text included below.)
On Mon, Feb 26, 2007, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > On 24/02/07 at 16:34 +0100, Loïc Minier wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I've been rebuilding the GNOME stack with a couple of interesting QA > > tests: > > - -Os in CFLAGS > > - -Wl,-O1 in LDFLAGS > > - -Wl,-z,defs in LDFLAGS > > - -j2 in MAKEFLAGS > > - use differents directories for builddir and srcdir > > > > Not all these tests are easily achieved with Debian packages. It was > > easier for me because I didn't dpkg-buildpackage these, I used a > > GNOME tool named jhbuild instead. > > > > These tests would be however interesting for Debian packages: > > - -Os is useful for embedded platforms > > - -Wl,-O1 gives better performances and might be promoted for all > > packages at some point > > - -Wl,-z,defs checks for missing link flags; this is a very useful test > > but it breaks with Python extensions > > - -j2 is interesting to catch errors in Makefiles and might be used in > > the future to speed up builds > > > > One way to easily test these flags might be to use wrappers for cc, > > gcc, c++, g++..., adding the flags. > > The main problem with testing -Os, -Wl,-O1 and -Wl,-z,defs is that they > could cause the compiler/linker to generate incorrect code instead of > just failing, and this is much harder to detect. I think -Os and -Wl,-O1 are more about testing our toolchain, but I think it's interesting to check whether this works on a large scale or in e.g. the GNOME stack because this has some direct benefit for people interested in the use of these flags and because it will improve our toolchain. I agree it might also produce broken binaries and that it would be hard to test, but it's a good first step into ensuring we could provide a "thin client optimized" archive for example. -Wl,-z,defs shouldn't cause any incorrect binaries; it should simply prevent the build in interesting cases, that is when some link flags are missing. The most problematic packages with -z defs are Python bindings which explicitely avoid linking to -lpython since the python interpreter is not linked to libpython, but provides the same symbols. > make -j2 looks really interesting. Yes; I expect it will expose some rare Makefile races (rare is in the context of GNOME since all modules are mostly automakized; other upstreams might have broken Makefiles :-) but it will certainly help us work toward building with parallel=$i, and I'm sure you would benefit of that! > Are you interested in working with me on that ? Well, I've got the tools to do the work over GNOME (jhbuild), and I'm busy enough that I'd prefer avoiding putting my finger in more general QA stuff. O:-) These were mostly suggestions as a followup to your request during your talk at FOSDEM of what tests you could run; it seemed you were requesting more ideas to keep more nodes busy. :) -- Loïc Minier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
