#5318: ideas for improving random testers (like #4779)
-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Reporter: cwitty | Owner: mabshoff
Type: enhancement | Status: new
Priority: major | Milestone: sage-3.4.1
Component: doctest | Keywords:
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Random testers (like the ones in #4779) should have a structure something
like this (untested):
{{{
def test_foo(n_trials, seed=None, verbose=False):
with random_seed(seed):
used_seed = initial_seed()
try:
for i in range(n_trials): # or whatever
... do test
... if verbose, then print out the details of the
test you're running
except:
print "We've detected a failure in random testing."
print "Please report this bug; you may be the only person"
print "in the world to see this particular problem!"
print "initial seed: " + used_seed
print "trial: " + i
raise
}}}
Then the doctests should start with:
{{{
sage: test_foo(2, seed=0, verbose=True)
... verbose output from two tests; should always be the same across
machines, etc.
}}}
to verify that the test is correctly using the randstate framework, so
that failures can be reproduced.
Then you can continue to:
{{{
sage: test_foo(10)
sage: test_foo(100) # long time
}}}
which will use truly random seeds (with /dev/urandom).
The above should be adjusted if you want to run the testing function for a
very long time; you would want to re-initialize the random seed at least
every few seconds, so that if you detect a problem after running for
several hours, you don't have to run for the same several hours to
reproduce it.
The simplest way is not to loop for long inside the function; instead, do:
{{{
while True:
test_foo(100)
}}}
(That's a lot of boilerplate; maybe this whole setup can be encapsulated
in a decorator?)
--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/5318>
Sage <http://sagemath.org/>
Sage - Open Source Mathematical Software: Building the Car Instead of
Reinventing the Wheel
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