libctf and libsframe testing

[Jan Beulich]

On 05.08.2025 13:43, Nick Alcock wrote:
> On 1 Aug 2025, Jan Beulich stated:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> just came to notice that the testsuite runs are all building binaries for the
>> host, not the target.
> 
> Well... the libctf testsuite should be building binaries for both,
> actually. libctf itself is a host library, with no target-dependent
> components (it leans on bfd for those), so we do want to test it on the
> host: that's where it'sll run.
> 
> ... *however*. The binaries the testsuite builds fall into two
> categories:
> 
>  - "lookup binaries", which are executed on the host: some just do their
>    own thing using libctf API calls, but others (e.g. in libctf-lookup/)
>    are used to inspect...
>  - ... object files and linked binaries which contain CTF. These are
>    built with the target compiler, or should be.

Provided there is one, that is. I surely don't have some 150 cross compilers
installed.

> The compilation of both these binaries happens in
> libctf/testsuite/lib/ctf-lib.exp:run_lookup_test(), if you're
> interested. They are driven by *.lk files: any *.lk files which do not
> specify a source: are building lookup binaries only, on the host.
> 
>>                        While this may be sensible when testing an individual
>> target, (afaict) it's doing all the same over and over when doing bulk tests.
>> I couldn't spot any means (e.g. an env var) to override this behavior, i.e.
>> optionally suppress such redundant testing. If there is one, could you please
>> point me in the right direction? If there is none, can something be added?
> 
> ... sure: we could at least not rerun those tests that don't use source:
> at all. I wonder what the least horrible approach would be... maybe a
> configure flag to ask run_lookup_test to quietly do nothing if host !=
> target and source: is not in use?

Well, that's precisely what I don't know, or else I might have preferred to
post a patch.

Jan