Re: LISTEN/NOTIFY regression tests

Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com> writes:
> This patch adds some primitive regression tests for the LISTEN,
> NOTIFY, and UNLISTEN commands -- there were previously no regression
> tests for this functionality.

These cannot usefully be tested with our current regression test
methodology, as you observe in your comments.

> One possibility is just writing a separate little C
> application that does the LISTEN/NOTIFY testing itself, and
> is invoked by the regression test script. The same technique
> would be useful for doing some testing of VACUUM, for
> example. Does anyone else think this would be useful?

We have previously speculated about setting up some sort of test harness
program that can drive multiple backends through a coordinated series of
operations. This would allow realistic testing of LOCK, LISTEN/NOTIFY,
MVCV semantics, etc, so it shouldn't be single-purpose --- it should be
script-driven somehow. I think we had talked about scripts with
contents like
[to backend 1]
some SQL commands...
[to backend 2]
some SQL commands...
[to backend 1]
some more SQL commands...
but I can't recall if anyone had good ideas about how to describe the
expected output. If you search the archives you can probably find
the previous discussions --- it was a couple years ago.

regards, tom lane