[Scons-dev] Progressing D tool support

[Russel Winder]

I am assuming for now that
https://bitbucket.org/scons/scons/pull-request/1/update-the-dmd-tool is
rejected (which is fine per se) but I believe it must be seen as a
blocker to 2.3.0 not to have the at least these changes in place.
Hopefully though I will have merged the dmd/gdc/ldc separate tools work
and give everyone a better time of it.

One of the reasons for not merging the pull request was a lack of new
tests, which is fine in a sense and impossible to comply with in
another. The changes were all about versions of D installed. I am not
entirely sure there are tests that can be written to specifically vet
the changes made. Moreover I suspect no-one other than me has D
installed – I have a deep suspicion that the D tests are not run by the
CI.

Clearly the tests for D need extending, they are woefully inadequate
just now, but without D on the CI machine, there is no motivation.  Also
of course the SCons Buildbot is still in a bit of a bad way, cf.
http://buildbot.scons.org/grid

I think I can offer my 8-core Debian Unstable box as a slave, but it is
a workstation and prone to being rebooted as and when. I tend to use the
D debs now but I do not necessarily guarantee a working version. For
example the recent 2.060 has some regression issues so I am still with
2.059 but from time to time upgrade and downgrade for experimentation.

Back to D tool evolution: given the integration of dmd and gdc with the
C toolchains, it makes more sense to integrate with the smart_link
activity, thus to evolve with the whole of SCons rather than as a
separate tool.  Stage 1 must be though to get the current pull request
sorted. The main problem is I have one machine type 64-bit Debian Linux.
I can probably test on Mac OS X Snow Leopard but I have no idea if this
will be a 32-bit or 64-bit test (cue rant about fascist dictatorial
monopolistic behaviour by Apple <elided>)  I cannot test on Windows.

What is needed is some form of development test network where folk can
see the effect of changes on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, Mac OS X Linux
with various different installations of software, in my case D – given 3
variants of D this is a lot of combinations. Only with all of these can
the true nature of my changes be tested, currently all I have been doing
is amend the code so it works on my set up. Thus tests are not really
possible beyond what there is without the resources to actually run
tests in the 9! different ways.

Is there a CI system where one can submit repository references and get
a test result? 

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : <http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/scons-dev/attachments/20120809/edc1d1e4/attachment.pgp>