Re: [HACKERS] Daily regression testing via vmware - useful?

Stephen Birch <sbirch(at)ironmountainsystems(dot)com> writes:
> What is the current state of regression testing on the CVS tree? Are
> the regression tests performed once in a while, or routinely?

I make a practice of running them whenever I pull a cvs update (once or
twice a week usually), and before I commit any changes. I hope other
developers run them fairly routinely as well.

> I am kicking around the idea of using one of my old machines (a P90) to
> run nightly regression tests on the CVS tree.

I think this might be a good thing to do, even though as MikeA points
out, coverage of only Intel-based platforms isn't all that impressive.
(At least not to those of us who use non-Intel platforms.) If the
idea seems to work out, perhaps other people could be persuaded to
contribute cycles on non-Intel boxes.

There are other open-source projects running automated regression tests
this way; Mozilla is probably the most visible example. As far as I've
heard, it's been useful for them. If you can set it up without too much
work, I'd say give it a try, and we'll find out whether it helps us or
not. We can always drop the experiment if it seems not to help.

regards, tom lane