Want recommended reading on random regression test drivers

"Kenneth 'Bessarion' Boyd" <zaimoni@zaimoni.com>
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:50:16 -0700 (PDT)

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Want recommended reading on random regression test drivers zaimoni@zaimoni.com (Kenneth 'Bessarion' Boyd) (2009-06-15)
| List of all articles for this month |

From: "Kenneth 'Bessarion' Boyd" <zaimoni@zaimoni.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:50:16 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: Compilers Central
Keywords: testing, question
Posted-Date: 16 Jun 2009 07:04:08 EDT

I knew I'd want a set of random regression test drivers for Z.C++
( http://developer.berlios.de/projects/zcplusplus/ ), but I wasn't
expecting to want them quite this fast.


This is more of a request for "required reading" or "classics"
(preferably URLs, although hard copy sources are also of interest) on
random test drivers and test generators. I am planning to review the
volatile random test generator at
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~eeide/emsoft08/ (Eric Eide and John Regehr).


Thanks in advance for your time.


----


Intended architecture:
The current test driver system is a Bourne shell script that executes
a variety of pass/fail test cases, and records which ones do not work
(pass test cases that fail, and fail test cases that pass). For debug
builds, all test cases that fail by assertion also don't work.


I'm generally looking to extend this to handle random spot-checks:
* save random test case to temporary file
* exercise test case
* if test case works, delete test case.


If the test cases are merely coming from a large but exhaustive
reference set, another use case would be to iterate through all of the
test cases. However, I'm expecting this to be prohibitive in
execution time for anything that really needs this. (E.g., integer
constant expressions using INT_MIN for two's-complement signed integer
targets.)


----


The project only builds under MingW32 3.4.5/4.2.1/4.3.3 currently.
Extending the build systems to OpenBSD GCC 3.3.5 and MSVC++ 2008 is a
low priority.



Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.