Re: [sferac@bo.nettuno.it: Re: [HACKERS] BUG: NOT boolfield kills backend]

> I'm using postgres in commecrcial applications since beginning of
> 1995 and certainly without home-made test-suite I couldn't do that.
> And I put new version into production only if my test-sute passes
> for me on specific machine and works at least month.
> Sometimes it works but I didnt' satisfied by speed and I'm looking
> for workaround ( robust workaround ). I would be happy if someone
> could works on general test suite which cover my specific data,
> operational system and environment and I would prefer to run
> regression tests for a 30 minutes, one hour or more if it would
> guarantee my applications will run ok, but I understand how different
> may be data, OSes and especially appl. environment. i.e. fast
> developing Linux, compilers, locale, libc etc...

Well, it sounds like you just volunteered :)

That is how we build Postgres: people contribute features and support
which addresses their needs or requirements.

I agree that a large/long db regression test would be interesting and
helpful, and you are already providing that, and contributing back the
results, for your specific platform. How large is the dataset for your
test? If it is relatively small it could be packaged into the Postgres
distribution. If it is a megabyte or larger then it could be packaged
into a tar file and placed on the Postgres ftp or web site. That would
let others run the same large tests, and would encourage them to
contribute other large test suites or to augment yours.

A complication is that you are compiling with locale features and using
the Russian/Cyrillic character set. I don't know if that combination is
testable on other machines; it probably is but others would need to be
able to interpret the results too.

Tatsuo has also been very active with the locale features, and you might
want to coordinate with him on ideas for a test suite which addresses
those features specifically.

It helps to have a test coordinator, which you might be willing to do.
For example, during alpha or early beta, you can be running the test and
reporting results, then during mid- to late-beta you can be soliciting
others to run the same test on other platforms.

Another interesting regression test would involve multiple clients
running on a shared database, with transactions, etc. Should be possible
to do from a shell script so we could run it ad infinitum.

Cheers.

- Tom