libctf and libsframe testing

[Nick Alcock]

On 5 Aug 2025, Jan Beulich stated:

> 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.

Yeah, this is skipped if the target compiler is not available.

>> 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.

I guess a configure flag to libctf/configure.ac might do it. I'll see if
I can whip one up this week, before the summer holiday.

-- 
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