Compliance testing for TCL interpreter

sam appleton

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Jan 25, 2018, 3:57:40 PM1/25/18

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Hi

We have slightly modified the TCL interpreter that ships with our product. One of our customers asked is there some way that we can qualify that these modifications didn't break "something" in the underlying interpreter. Is there some standard compliance/test suite that can be used to check a TCL installation - like a set of self-test utilities or standard functionaltiy tests?

We're currently locked into 8.5.8.

Please, no gratuitous "why do you need to do that" comments. It's asinine.

Thanks in advance,

Sam Appleton

Harald Oehlmann

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Jan 25, 2018, 4:12:12 PM1/25/18

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TCL 8.5.8 source distribution ships with a quite complete test suite.
"make test" ?

Harald

Rich

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Jan 25, 2018, 4:14:05 PM1/25/18

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sam appleton <sam.s.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> We have slightly modified the TCL interpreter that ships with our
> product. One of our customers asked is there some way that we can
> qualify that these modifications didn't break "something" in the
> underlying interpreter. Is there some standard compliance/test suite
> that can be used to check a TCL installation - like a set of
> self-test utilities or standard functionaltiy tests?

The Tcl source bundle includes a large number of self tests run by
tcltest. Presumably you downloaded a source bundle to then modify in
whatever way you did. So why can't you just run the self tests that
should have been included.

>
> We're currently locked into 8.5.8.
>
> Please, no gratuitous "why do you need to do that" comments. It's
> asinine.

At least you are not locked into 8.4....

But, changing your 'modifications' into an extension, so it would work
in future interpreters, would let you get 'unlocked', because at some
future time point, 8.5.8 will be in the status 8.4 is today.

sam appleton

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Jan 25, 2018, 4:21:56 PM1/25/18

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Thanks Harald and Rich,

The developer did not check in the test directory for some reason.
I recovered it from the stock 8.5.8 source installation.

We couldn't do most of our modification as an extension unfortunately.
We tried to do it as patch files for a long time, and it got too
hard to maintain.

Sam

Gerald Lester

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Jan 25, 2018, 5:17:45 PM1/25/18

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On 01/25/2018 02:57 PM, sam appleton wrote:
> Hi
>
> We have slightly modified the TCL interpreter that ships with our product. One of our customers asked is there some way that we can qualify that these modifications didn't break "something" in the underlying interpreter. Is there some standard compliance/test suite that can be used to check a TCL installation - like a set of self-test utilities or standard functionaltiy tests?

Yes, there is.

>
> We're currently locked into 8.5.8.

There are in the test directory of the source distribution.

If for some reason you deleted them, you can re-pull the 8.5.8 source
tree from http://core.tcl.tk/tcl/info/8c5e95aa6620be29.

Just because I'm nosy, why are you "locked" in to 8.5.8 -- Tcl is
*highly* backward compatible and you should have no trouble upgrading to
8.6 or 8.7.

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Gerald W. Lester, President, KNG Consulting LLC |
| Email: Gerald...@kng-consulting.net |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

sam appleton

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Jan 25, 2018, 5:36:06 PM1/25/18

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We're locked in because we modified the core of the interpreter (not
just extensions). We could possibly forward-port those as patch files
but it might be quite complicated.

Gerald Lester

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Jan 25, 2018, 6:09:39 PM1/25/18

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On 01/25/2018 04:36 PM, sam appleton wrote:
>
> We're locked in because we modified the core of the interpreter (not
> just extensions). We could possibly forward-port those as patch files
> but it might be quite complicated.

You might want to check to see if either:
1) Those modifications were implemented in a later version of Tcl.
2) Could be done as an extension.

Jim

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Jan 25, 2018, 8:29:55 PM1/25/18

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On 1/25/2018 1:14 PM, Rich wrote:
> The Tcl source bundle includes a large number of self tests run by
> tcltest. Presumably you downloaded a source bundle to then modify in
> whatever way you did. So why can't you just run the self tests that
> should have been included.

There may be bugs found and testcases added after the release date
(presumably as more people use the release and report back).

So -- in addition to running the released test/suite -- consider
grabbing a newer test/suite to see: (a) what test/cases have been added;
and (b) if they pass on your version.

This may be motivation to update the embedded tcl/version of your tool
-- or motivation not to update, depending on the results.

At a minimum it will provide awareness of what works, what's broken,
what's been fixed, etc...

Jim