On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Dr. David Kirkby
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On 08/ 3/10 06:11 PM, William Stein wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to suggest an alternative approach to this problem of
>> "supported platforms".
>> How about if whenever somebody runs
>>
>>    make testlong
>>
>> at the end an email is sent to [email protected] that contains some
>> information:
>>
>>     * description of platform (OS + hardware)
>>     * list of files where tests failed
>>     * version of sage being tested
>>
>> A script will then 100% automatically generate a webpage based on the
>> above info that will
>> describe exactly which platforms are known to work for any given
>> version of Sage.  Simple
>> as that.   If we want the list of "supported platforms" for a *given
>> release* to go up, all we have
>> to do is get somebody somewhere to type "make testlong".
>>
>> Obviously, there will be an easy way to disable this.   Alternatively,
>> instead of "make testlong" we could
>> just use a different target, e.g., "make testlongreport".
>>
>> William
>
> I see two issues with this.
>
> 1) Not everyone has their computers set up so that they can send mail from
> the command line. In fact, given the totally obscure nature of sendmail, I
> would suggest that the number who do are in a minority.
>
> Most people will send mail from a client such as Thurderbird.

This is almost a nonissue, since Sage contains a sophisticated email
server (much like sendmail), as part of Twisted.
Try this in Sage:

   sage: email?

This command will even send emails from the computers on skynet!

> 2) It is far from unusual for 'make ptestlong' to generate failures, yet
> when those same doc tests are run again they pass. I don't know the reason
> for this, but it is a fact.

So we fix that problem.

>  Sometimes it might be resource shortages, but I
> don't think that all the problem. I've know it to do this on my Sun Blade
> 2000 which only has 2 CPUs, yet 8 GB RAM. 8 GB should be enough to run two
> tests.
>
> One could end up with an unnecessarily high number of failures reported

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