Re: Engines are started; first car is out the gate

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Ethan Merritt wrote:

> On Thursday 08 July 2004 08:59 am, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> >
> > I would be a taker, but I'm not sure Ethan has completed his changes.
> 
> As I said, I have some more tweaks that I will feed in after testing.
> But they are both localized and small, so I don't think that you should
> hold off just because of that.
> 
> > The patch I'm proposing is the "wth image", "with rgbimage", and "binary
> > datafile" stuff, but I should probably say a few things about it on the
> > list so people know what to expect.
> 
> My main concern is that you carefully check that your patch does not
> undo some of the code changes that my recent round of patches added.   
> 
> In fact, I suggest that is a general requirement for patches added in
> this current round.  Major changes on top of other major changes
> are a bit tricky.  Big patches should come with a demo/test-case so
> that it is easy to verify it still works later on.  For my recent patches
> these are:
> 	fillbetween.dem
> 	datatstrings.dem
> 	histograms.dem
> 	histograms2.dem	(currently shows a minor bug is present) 

Are they in 'all.dem' yet?  Because if so, I would like to propose a
regression test to be set up and be maintained from now on: for at least a
select few terminal drivers that write multi-page output files, e.g.
postscript and SVG, I think we should run a script like this in 'make
check':

	set term postscript colour solid
	set output 'current.ps'
	load 'all.dem'
	! diff -u current.ps regress.ps

"regress.ps" would have to be maintained outside CVS, though --- It's way
too large for regular processing by 'cvs update' and colleagues, esp. over
a dial-up link.

> We also might want a policy that new features default to 
> --enable-<feature>  to insure that they are well-tested for compatibility.

Agreed.  People building from CVS right now, so soon after a public
release, should get what they asked for: undiluted work-in-progress code.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.