Re: [Swig-devel] Radical new approach to development and moving towards version 3.1 or version 4.0

[Vadim Z. <vz...@ze...>]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2017 21:06:03 +0000 William S Fulton <ws...@fu...> wrote:

WSF> This are all fair points if we have testable code. I think you've
WSF> misunderstood the problem I'm suggesting we solve though. A lot of the
WSF> sub-standard languages don't have any test-suite whatsoever. I'm trying to
WSF> find a solution for these really rather shocking modules. Take the Fortran
WSF> module, it has hardly anything in it. Should we pretend it never happened
WSF> and get rid of it? If so, why should we keep the Modula3 module, which is
WSF> already included but is in a similar hardly developed state. And then we
WSF> have a number of other such as Pike which has a test-suite but I've no idea
WSF> how to make it work. Then we have the cffi module with quite a few patches,
WSF> but again, no idea how to make the test-suite work. What's your solution to
WSF> dealing with all these different modules?

 Sorry, just a quick reply to say that I understand your point but feel
like I have to spend some time on actually examining the current state of
the test suite in these backends before answering -- and I just don't have
this time right now. Hopefully I'll find some towards the end of the week.

 My global approach would be to try to apply reasonable efforts to salvage
what can be salvaged and drop all the rest. But perhaps this is too
extremist.

WSF> Modifying the test-suite to be more accommodating to nearly working modules
WSF> would be nice. However, my gut feeling is that once a test goes into the
WSF> not working category, it will never make its way out and hence for the last
WSF> few years, I've been fairly strict on accepting new modules that have all
WSF> the tests passing.

 Making all the tests pass is a very high bar. Again, a module can be
useful even if it doesn't support directors. Or even if it doesn't support
std::shared_ptr<> (which is crucial for me personally, so I give it as an
example just to avoid the appearance of bias). IMO as soon as we have a
reasonable number of passing tests and minimal amount of documentation,
there is no real reason not to add the new module to SWIG and continue
improving it later.

 Regards,
VZ