Re: Releasing in September

On 1/20/16 11:49 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Michael Paquier <michael(dot)paquier(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 2:30 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg(at)heroku(dot)com> wrote:
>>> What benefit does porting sqlsmith for inclusion in core have? I can
>>> only think of costs, including those that you mentioned.
>
>> We have automatic buildfarm coverage on many platforms. Perhaps we
>> could live without that with a buildfarm module though.
>
> I do not think we should necessarily try to include every testing tool
> in the core distribution. What is important is that they be readily
> available: easy to find, easy to use, documented, portable. "Same
> license as the PG core code" is not on that list.
>
> An immediately relevant example is that the buildfarm server and client
> code aren't in the core distribution, and AFAIR no one has suggested
> that they need to be.

Right. What I think would be far more useful is making it easier to
explicitly test things (better tools + design for test), and something
akin to buildfarm that will run automated testing on submitted patches.

Put another way: it's stupid that we even ask reviewers to waste time
running make check. That can be automated. Ideally reviewers shouldn't
be doing any testing, because the tests that are part of the patch
should answer every question they would have, but I don't see that
happening until we have a separate automation-only target that we don't
care how long it takes to run.
--
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com