[Ns-developers] Request for Merge -- Validation

[Mathieu Lacage]

On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 21:06 -0700, Tom Henderson wrote:
> craigdo at ee.washington.edu wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > Tom asked me to put together something that can be used to drive
> > non-trace-based regression tests and get it merged as soon as possible.
> > I've put together a change to regression.py that allows us to pass or fail
> > regression tests based on the return value of the test program.  I've added
> > versions of the random number generator validation tests that don't have any
> > code to generate pretty plots as a demonstration of how this might work.
> > 
> > The attached patch has:
> > 
> > 1) Changes to regression.py to allow non-trace-based tests.  The files in
> > regression/tests work just like they used to, except if there's an attribute
> > called "trace_compare" in the test module.  In this case, it tells
> > regression.py to just look at the return code from the test program.  See
> > regression/tests/test-rng-exponential.py for an example.
> > 
> > 2) There are four new .py files in regression/tests corresponding to the
> > tests for four of the rng distributions I socialized a while back.
> > 
> > 3) There is a new valver (validation and verification) directory to hold
> > dedicated tests.
> > 
> > 4) In the valver directory there is an rng directory in which you can find
> > four .cc files corresponding to the chi-square tests for the four
> > distributions.
> > 
> > N.B. The rng validation tests introduce a GSL dependency.
> > 
> > With this in place, we can begin to write validation and verification tests
> > that do not use the trace comparison function.
> > 
> > I'd like to merge this ASAP.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > -- Craig
> 
> Craig, before I comment on the patch, this patch is a good example to 
> ask the following.  Is this the type of patch that the submitter (or 
> maintainer) should upload to the Rietvald tool?  And should the review 
> be on ns-3-reviews mailing list?  What do the maintainers think about this?

I personally don't care if the submitter uses rietveld or not. What I
care is that the patch is of good quality and that is independent from
the tool used to review it. I might upload the patch to rietveld myself
if I feel the need to do so to complete the review. 

i.e., I feel that if submitters invest time in producing good patches,
reviewers should be able to invest time to use whatever medium these
submitters chose to use for submission.

Mathieu