gprofng testing

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Vladimir,

> I want to add more tests for gprofng.

That would be most appreciated.

> These tests use pre-existing experiments and binaries.
> Each test has a golden file which we compare against the new gprofng output.
> 
> We never rebuilt the experiments and binaries. But sometimes we changed the golden file.
> The size of experiments can be big.
> The size of gold files is usually small.
> 
> How to make such tests public?

With difficulty.  The size of the experiment files will be an obstacle
I expect.  Is it possible to instead provide a source file and have the
test compile it first instead ?

Assuming that the answer to that question is no, then is it possible
to create smaller test cases, or to compress the test files files and
then decompress them when they are being used ?

My best suggestion would be to create lots of small tests rather than
several large tests.  If that is possible.

> PS.
> I see that the old gprof doesn't have tests inside binutils-gdb.git. How do we test gprof?

We don't. :-(

Gprof is very old and was added to the binutils long ago.  Long before
testsuites were invented.  OK, so that is not quite true, testsuites
have been around for as along as code has been around, but the gprof
sources were added to the binutils without a testsuite and noone has
seen fit to create one since.  Of course if you are volunteering, I
will not say "no"...

Cheers
   Nick