Re: TAP tests take a long time

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 11:32 AM, Andrew Dunstan
> <andrew(dot)dunstan(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>> This buildfarm run as you can see takes 33m32s, and the Tap tests take a
>> combined 19m52s of that time.

> I don't think it's quite fair to complain about the TAP tests taking a
> long time to run as a general matter. Many people here have long
> wanted a separate test-suite for long running tests that can be run to
> really check everything possible, and apparently, TAP tests are it.

> What I think would be more useful is to break down where the time is
> getting spent. It may be that some of those tests are not adding
> value proportionate to their runtime.

The other thing that might be useful here is to push on parallelizing
buildfarm runs. Admittedly that will do nothing for the oldest and
slowest buildfarm critters, but for reasonably modern hardware the
serialization of the tests really handicaps you. We seem to have
fixed that for manual application of "make check-world", at least
if you know the right magic incantations to parallelize it; but
AFAIK the buildfarm script is entirely serial.

BTW, speaking of "value proportionate to runtime", the hash_index
regression script is now visibly a bottleneck in the core regression
tests. Could we take another look at whether that needs to run
quite so long?

regards, tom lane