[Ns-developers] Request for Merge -- Validation

[Tom Henderson]

Mathieu Lacage wrote:
> 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.
> 

OK, I have similar views about being liberal about accepting patches, 
but my lingering concern is about possible confusion regarding whether 
ns-developers or ns-3-reviews should be the mailing list to discuss 
patches; presently, we are using either one or the other (thankfully, 
not cross posting).

How about if we just announce one-time on ns-developers when a review 
(perhaps involving new or changed API) is being discussed on 
ns-3-reviews, and use ns-3-reviews only for the discussions that go on 
using the rietveld tool?

Tom