Re: Regression tests

At 09:17 AM 3/31/00 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>While applying the NT regression tests, I remember Tom Lane's comment
>that people are being much more picky about the regression results. In
>the old days, we could just say that they will have _expected_ errors,
>but now they want them to match exactly.
>
>Kind of funny, their standards are going up.

Is this perhaps a result of a growing audience for Postgres?

For instance, I dealt with one of our web toolkit "early achievers",
new to AOLserver, new to Postgres, new to the toolkit - that's a lot
of "new to's" for someone to deal with in parallel!

He had problems with the regression tests - cockpit error, first
go-around, later diminished to expected errors. He's hacker enough
to have run the regression tests in the first place (rather than
blindly assume his install went OK) and also to figure out that
the geometry results were probably due simply to FP imprecision,
but wanted to safety-blanket reassurance from myself (and Lamar
Owen) that all was A-OK. Particularly after his first go-around
of self-inflicted problems (the details of which I don't even
remember at the moment, he figured them out himself).

As PG gets more use, I would expect to see more, not fewer, intellegent
newcomers who aren't steeped in PG lore (i.e. experience with old
versions) who will be full of questions about any seeming abnormality.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.