Re: Simulator for GCC Testing [was: RE: [Fwd: Re: [avr-gcc-list] GCC-AVR Register optimisations]]

[William Rivet]

Eric, please share what info you have with me. I wouldn't mind running
whatever works through simulavr to see what it is about (I'm new to the
regression suite...I've only hacked GCC for it's C++ front-end bits, and
certainly broke many things when I did :-p )

Give the recent interest I'm trying to make some time to improve what I
can on simulavrxx since it was supposed to superceed the old simulavr.
If you CC the simulavr list, I'll also pick up on relevant threads a bit
quicker...I'm bad about following the avr list :-)

Cheers,

Bill



On Fri, 2008-01-11 at 20:14 -0700, Weddington, Eric wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: 
> > address@hidden 
> > [mailto:address@hidden
> > org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hutchinson
> > Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 6:27 PM
> > To: address@hidden
> > Cc: address@hidden
> > Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: [avr-gcc-list] GCC-AVR Register optimisations]
> > 
> > Here my input:
> > 
> > For starters gcc has testsuite that can be used. It's not perfect but 
> > its quite demanding - even if we cant do all the tests.
> > 
> > Do we have info on setting this up with simulator? I did have some 
> > instruction - once!
> > 
> > After than I suggest some "benchmark"  that would produce more normal 
> > code and also give qualitative indications of performance 
> > (size is easy, 
> > speed would be nice).
> > 
> > Finally, regression tests using testcases and bug reports.
> > 
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Some points:
> 
> - Yes, GCC does have a Regression Test Suite, and it can execute for the
> AVR using the SimulAVR simulator. There are many, many tests that pass
> for the AVR. There are quite a few that don't, but most of those
> failures that I have looked at either the test needs fixing (because it
> assumes a 32-bit processor), or the tests don't apply to the AVR. Some
> work needs to be done to get the Regression Test Suite in shape for the
> AVR.
> 
> - As mentioned, simulavr is known to work as a simulator for the GCC
> test suite. However, simulavr is not really maintained anymore. At the
> simulavr project on Savannah, there is a new code base called simulavrxx
> which is based on C++. This is maintained, but it could use help: It
> doesn't run on Cygwin yet, and AFAIK it cannot run the GCC Test Suite
> yet. Any help on this is deeply appreciated.
> <https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/simulavr>
> 
> I strongly recommend that the wheel not be reinvented. If people are
> interested in running the GCC Regression Test Suite, I would recommend
> using available tools, and improving the available tools rather then
> invent new ones.
> 
> I have instructions on running the GCC Regression Test Suite (from
> Bjoern Haase, IIRC). I have yet to run it myself, but others have done
> so successfully. However, there are reports about difficulties on
> running the test on Cygwin. I have heard that it is successful on Linux.
> There is a person from Belgium, Mike Stein, who has been running the GCC
> Test Suite for the AVR pretty much on a daily basis and he has been
> posting the results regularly on the gcc-testresults mailing list:
> <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-testresults/>. Just search for "avr" to see
> the results. (It looks like he last did it in December.) I'll be
> attempting to run the GCC Test Suite probably sometime in Q1 2008. (I'm
> going to be busy in January and February.) Just email me if anyone is
> interested in the instructions.
> 
> Note that running the GCC Test Suite is imperative for anyone who works
> on GCC, because in order to submit any patches to the GCC project, they
> require that the patch is tested with the Test Suite and that there are
> no new regressions. That's the main purpose of the test suite.
> 
> I'll start a new thread about a benchmark suite...
> 
> Thanks,
> Eric Weddington
> 
>