[Ns-developers] Ns-3 Regression Testing

[craigdo@ee.washington.edu]

I addressed some good comments ...

1.  Nonstandard output redirection
    Resolution:  fixed;

2.  Don't like hidden diff output
    Resolution:  used verbose flag (-v) to tell pgm to pipe diff output
through head;

3.  Boilerplate code
    Resolution:  moved to small python helper module;

4.  Dependency on Mercurial
    Resolution:  check for mercurial and if not found, use urllib to pull
tarball off of web;

5.  Helpful hint on error
    Resolution:  added helpful hint describing diff command to run for more
info;

If there are no objections, tomorrow I'll push the code and associated
reference trace repo parallel to ns-3-dev (ns-3-dev-ref-traces), and add a
first reference trace tarball to "http://www.nsnam.org/releases/" to
parallel the release tarballs.

I'll also add some words to the release steps to cover making the new traces
tarball and repo.

-- Craig