gmane.comp.gnome.apps.gnucash.devel

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-22T18:11:22

On May 21, 2012, at 1:30 PM, John Ralls wrote:


There's a little bug in Swig [1] that prevents this from working cleanly, but it's easily enough patched:
--- a/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg~Tue Mar  6 14:17:58 2012
+++ b/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swgMon May 21 16:38:09 2012
< at >< at > -74,7 +74,7 < at >< at >
   char *ret;
   size_t l;
 
-  SCM_ASSERT (gh_string_p(str), str, 1, FUNC_NAME);
+  SCM_ASSERT (scm_string_p(str), str, 1, FUNC_NAME);
   
   #ifdef HAC_SCM_C_STRING_LENGTH
   l = scn_c_string_length(str);

That file is $PREFIX/share/swig/2.0.x/guile/guile_scm_run.swg if you want to fix an installed swig.

It would be A Good Thing™ to add -Wall to -Werror when --enable-error-on-warning is set in configure (so that it's the default from building from a subversion or git checkout), but I'm afraid that until Swig gets that bug fixed and the fixed version is widespread in distros that it would cause more trouble than good.

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3528887&group_id=1645&atid=101645
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Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-22T20:36:02

On May 21, 2012, at 1:30 PM, John Ralls wrote:


There's a little bug in Swig [1] that prevents this from working cleanly, but it's easily enough patched:
--- a/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg~Tue Mar  6 14:17:58 2012
+++ b/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swgMon May 21 16:38:09 2012
< at >< at > -74,7 +74,7 < at >< at >
  char *ret;
  size_t l;

-  SCM_ASSERT (gh_string_p(str), str, 1, FUNC_NAME);
+  SCM_ASSERT (scm_string_p(str), str, 1, FUNC_NAME);

  #ifdef HAC_SCM_C_STRING_LENGTH
  l = scn_c_string_length(str);

That file is $PREFIX/share/swig/2.0.x/guile/guile_scm_run.swg if you want to fix an installed swig.

It would be A Good Thing™ to add -Wall to -Werror when --enable-error-on-warning is set in configure (so that it's the default from building from a subversion or git checkout), but I'm afraid that until Swig gets that bug fixed and the fixed version is widespread in distros that it would cause more trouble than good.

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3528887&group_id=1645&atid=101645


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Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-22T14:55:19

On May 22, 2012, at 7:38 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:


Assuming that you have installed Valgrind, of course. Depending on how your distro packages Gnucash, you may need to build your own to get symbols, and the Valgrind docs recommend turning off optimizations (-O0) as well. Some useful instructions:

http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_I_heard_it_is_too_hard_to_compile_GnuCash.21
wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building
http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/quick-start.html


Regards,
John Ralls

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Donald Allen — 2012-05-22T14:48:59

You urge me above to "pay closer attention to what I wrote, please".
Now do the same with my message. I made a suggestion to you, based on
many years of experience in software development as a manager and as
an individual participant, and then I VOLUNTEERED TO HELP. Instead, I
get this absurdly rude response from you. Look in the mirror before
you start spouting about restraint. My offer of help is withdrawn.

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-22T14:42:36

On May 21, 2012, at 8:23 PM, Donald Allen wrote:


Pay closer attention to what I wrote, please. Merely launching Gnucash and doing a few basic operations under Valgrind won't accomplish much -- but it will take a long time, because Valgrind slows execution by a factor of 20-30x, according to their own documentation.

As for the comprehensive testing, I'm plugging away at that in the engine, and Phil started this thread by noting that he was finding leaks with tests -- which is what he's working on (in the backend code).

As a more general observation, your constant carping about a process that *you don't participate in* is annoying and unhelpful.
Please restrain yourself.

Regards,
John Ralls

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Derek Atkins — 2012-05-22T14:38:55

Don,

Donald Allen <donaldcallen< at >gmail.com> writes:


There is a gnucash-valgrind script that gets generated on all platforms
except Windows, and it gets installed into the bindir alongside
gnucash.  So you should just be able to run "gnucash-valgrind" instead
of "gnucash" already.


-derek

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Donald Allen — 2012-05-22T14:32:46

Yes, I said so above. Make a valgrind+gnucash executable available to
me (or tell me how to build one), and I will put it through the kind
of paces that I use gnucash for normally. I've got a very fast box
with 8 Gb of memory and SSDs running Linux that should make the
performance hit tolerable. I can easily test both the db (postgresql)
and xml backends.

/Don

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Derek Atkins — 2012-05-22T14:23:01

Donald,

Donald Allen <donaldcallen< at >gmail.com> writes:


Are you offering to help do this periodic testing!?   If so, thank you!


-derek

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Donald Allen — 2012-05-22T03:23:08

I would argue that waiting until you have what you think is adequate
test coverage is not a good strategy. Releases don't happen that often
and it sounds like running the whole thing under valgrind isn't that
difficult, so the cost of doing it is not high. And it just might turn
up something important, even without comprehensive test coverage. You
could make the gnucash+valgrind package available to some volunteers
whever you see fit during the release cycle (I'd be happy to be one of
them) to exercise the system and report the problems it turns up. So I
think it makes sense from a cost-benefit standpoint not to wait.

I would also argue that the comprehensive test suite, especially on a
volunteer project like this, could be a pipe dream. I've been involved
in projects where people were being paid for their work and all the
right things were said, but not done, about test coverage. It's like
documentation. Programmers like to program, not write tests, not write
documentation. I'm not saying it never happens, but its a lot more
difficult to make it happen than to get reams of code written.

/Don

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-22T03:10:04

On May 21, 2012, at 3:41 PM, Donald Allen wrote:


Not routinely. Every so often someone will get motivated and run under valgrind for a while and chase down some of the leaks, but there are too many execution paths and not yet enough tests to be sure of exercising even a significant percentage of the program. We'll get that sorted eventually.

Regards,
John Ralls

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Donald Allen — 2012-05-21T22:41:59

Do you guys run the whole system under valgrind (John is obviously
right about tests on the parts don't necessarily say anything about
the whole) prior to release as part of your QA process?

/Don

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Phil Longstaff — 2012-05-21T22:22:53

Yes.  A lot of the leaks are in the unit test code.  But I've found 2 legitimate leaks as well.

Phil

________________________________
 From: John Ralls <jralls< at >ceridwen.us>
To: Christian Stimming <christian< at >cstimming.de> 
Cc: gnucash-devel< at >gnucash.org; Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff< at >yahoo.ca> 
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 4:56:52 PM
Subject: Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

On May 21, 2012, at 1:42 PM, Christian Stimming wrote:

OK, though a leak in a unit test doesn't necessarily mean that the application leaks, nor does the absence of a leak in the unit test guarantee that the application doesn't leak. 

Regards,
John Ralls

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-21T20:56:52

On May 21, 2012, at 1:42 PM, Christian Stimming wrote:


OK, though a leak in a unit test doesn't necessarily mean that the application leaks, nor does the absence of a leak in the unit test guarantee that the application doesn't leak. 

Regards,
John Ralls

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Christian Stimming — 2012-05-21T20:42:13

Am Montag, 21. Mai 2012, 13:30:11 schrieb John Ralls:

I think Phil's suggestion is a very valid idea in order to find memory leaks 
inside the functions that are being tested. On the other hand, I agree with 
Derek and John in that using valgrind doesn't make much sense as a default 
when running the unittests. Hence, I think it would be good to provide some 
infrastructure for optionally running the tests with valgrind. But it 
shouldn't be added as a normal testing step that needs to be performed by 
everyone who is running the tests.

Regards,

Christian

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

John Ralls — 2012-05-21T20:30:11

On May 21, 2012, at 11:36 AM, Phil Longstaff wrote:


I don't think we want to impose the performance hit for doing that by default: Unit tests need to run quickly so that they're used after every change. A 20X slowdown would mean that nobody would use them.

What's more, ISTM leaks in unit tests aren't a big deal anyway. Unit test programs are small and exit almost immediately. A leak will do no harm at all. (Some of the "make check" tests are another matter entirely.)

As for uninitialized variables, the compiler will find those if you build with -Wall -Werror. No need to take Valgrind's performance hit for that.

Regards,
John Ralls

Re: Running unit tests under valgrind

Derek Atkins — 2012-05-21T18:46:48

Phil,

On Mon, May 21, 2012 2:36 pm, Phil Longstaff wrote:

i would object to that.  I always run "make check" on all builds, and I do
not yet always have valgrind installed/configured.  I suspect that is true
for many users, too.

I would not object to an --enable-valgrind configure option that would
enable running unit tests with valgrind, or even a configure test that
detects a working VG install.  But it should not be required.

Thanks,


-derek

Running unit tests under valgrind

Phil Longstaff — 2012-05-21T18:36:58

I already found one memory leak and one uninitialized variable when running the libqof/qof unit tests under valgrind.  Can we set up all unit tests to run with valgrind automatically?

Phil

Re: GSOC coding begins

Ngewi Fet — 2012-05-21T11:17:53

That is indeed interesting to know. Thanks.

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 1:01 AM, Yawar Amin <yawar.amin< at >gmail.com> wrote:

Re: GSOC coding begins

Yawar Amin — 2012-05-20T23:01:59

Hi Ngewi,

On 2012-05-20 16:05, Ngewi Fet wrote:

Thanks for letting us know. I went to your blog and discovered Pencil
for Firefox, which I am liking very much for making mockups etc. Also
you might be interested to learn that the Pencil team has released a new
Android 4 stencil set:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/pencil-user/dj2mo3uEA2w

Regards,

Yawar



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GSOC coding begins

Ngewi Fet — 2012-05-20T20:05:30

Hi everyone,
The coding period for Google Summer of Code begins tomorrow.
(In case you forgot, I am working on the Gnucash Mobile Android app :-)

The repository is hosted on GitHub:
https://github.com/codinguser/GnucashMobile

In addition, I am blogging about my experiences on my blog at
http://www.codinguser.com

Cheers,
Ngewi

Re: Re: Translation (Cristian Marchi)

Tiago Neiva — 2012-05-18T21:04:44

Some notes:
- the Portuguese web site is almost non-existent, but this part could
be a joint work, in wikipedia there is only a Portuguese version and
the code of conduct says that if an article starts in on version it
should be kept in that version even if is changed by a person of a
different country (not difficult)
- the manual and program it's more difficult to share, we use very
different terms for accounting

PS: just sent a private email in pt

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 5:00 PM,  <gnucash-devel-request< at >gnucash.org> wrote: