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Diffstat (limited to 'community/gsoc/project_ideas/testsuites.mdwn')
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diff --git a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/testsuites.mdwn b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/testsuites.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4f8d43fc --- /dev/null +++ b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/testsuites.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] + +[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable +id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this +document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or +any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant +Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license +is included in the section entitled +[[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]] + +[[!meta title="Fix Compatibility Problems Exposed by Testsuites"]] + +A number of software packages come with extensive testsuites. +Some notable ones are Perl, Python, GNU Coreutils, and glib. +While these testsuites were written mostly to track regressions in the respective packages, +some of the tests fail on the Hurd in general. + +While in some cases these might point to wrong usage of system interfaces, +most of the time such failures are actually caused by shortcomings in Hurd's implementation of these interfaces. +These shortcomings are often not obvious in normal use, +but can be directly or indirectly responsible for all kinds of failures. +The testsuites help in isolating such problems, +so they can be tracked down and fixed. + +This task thus consists in running some of the mentioned testsuites +(and/or any other ones that come to mind), +and looking into the causes of failures. +The goal is to analyze all failures in one or more of the listed testsuites, +to find out what shortcomings in the Hurd implementation cause them (if any), +and to fix at least some of these shortcomings. + +Note that this task somewhat overlaps with the [[Perl/Python task|perl_python]] listed above. +Here the focus however is not on improving the support for any particular program, +but on fixing general problems in the Hurd. + +This is a very flexible task: +while less experienced students should be able to tackle at least a few of the easier problems, +other issues will be challenging even for experienced hackers. +No specific previous knowledge is required for this task; +only fairly decent C programming skills. +While tracking down the various issues, +the student will be digging into the inner workings of the Hurd, +and thus gradually gaining the knowledge required for Hurd development in general. + +Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi) + +Exercise: Take a stab at one of the testsuite failures, +and write a minimal testcase exposing the underlying problem. +Actually fixing it would be a bonus of course -- +but as it's hard to predict which issues will be easy and which will be tricky, +we will already be satisfied if the student makes a good effort. +(We hope to see some discussion of the problems in this case though :-) ) |