Re: Two weeks to feature freeze

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)dcc(dot)uchile(dot)cl> writes:
> It would be nice to have a system which could receive a patch and
> compile and verify that it passes the tests before it goes to Bruce's
> queue; or compile on multiple platforms to check for portability
> problems, for example.

It happens not infrequently that Bruce commits some patch that fails the
regression tests. Whereupon he gets chewed out by whoever notices it
first :-). I've been guilty of the same on occasion, even though I try
hard to avoid it. If the regression tests took two seconds to run I'm
sure we'd both set up scripts to ensure we *never* commit without
regression testing first. On the other hand, if they took a week to run
you can be damn sure that most commits would go in without any
regression testing. I think that our existing tests are a fairly happy
medium --- they catch most stuff, and the stuff they don't catch is in
my opinion stuff that an automated test is unlikely to catch. (I do add
things to the regression tests whenever something shows up that looks
like it should have been caught.)

Another point is that passing on one platform doesn't ensure passing on
another. Here we really rely on the willingness of the pghackers
community to update to CVS tip regularly and run the regression tests
when they do. Again, tests that take a couple minutes to run are ideal;
if they took a week then the uptake would drop to zero, and we'd not be
ahead.

regards, tom lane