Re: [hatari-devel] The new "make test" automatic regression test suite

[Thomas Huth <th.huth@xxxxxxxxx>]

Am Sat, 14 Apr 2018 17:02:54 +0200
schrieb Thorsten Otto <admin@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

> On Samstag, 14. April 2018 14:05:52 CEST Thomas Huth wrote:
> > The disadvantage here is that you can only use PRG files that use
> > the supported subset of the GEMDOS emulation layer in Hatari.  
> 
> But that also means your test environment is quite different from
> "normal" usage. Actually, a lot of Hatari cannot be testet this way
> (i didn't look at your mini-ROM yet, but i doubt that it tries to do
> much hardware initialization, like a real TOS would do). You don't
> even know if it is able to boot the ROM, according to the settings.

That's not the purpose of the small test PRGs that we have in the tests
folder: They check special stuff like bus errors, certain CPU opcodes
(natfeats) or emulated OS calls (xbios) - and for this you certainly
don't need a full-blown TOS ROM.

For testing the boot process of real TOS ROMs, we also have got the
"tosboot" tester. But for this, you need to point it to a set of TOS
ROM images that should be tested, so this is not includable in the
automatic test suite.

> PS.: once the tests run automatically, it maybe be even possible to
> download some "official" ROM from a known location. You will need an
> internet connection anyway to clone the repo, and as long as you are
> not distributing the ROMs, there should be no legal issues (at least
> i think so)

First, mercurial can also be used offline as long as you don't want to
push/fetch stuff to/from the repository server. And believe it or not,
sometimes I even still work without internet, e.g. while traveling.
Additionally, adding a hard dependency on a third-party website which
is distributing legally debatable content should be really avoided. So
no, this idea is definitely a no-go.

 Thomas