Csmith - C compiler stress test

Steven Schveighoffer schveiguy at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 13 13:22:28 PDT 2011


On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:00:46 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 4/13/2011 11:57 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> As much as this might be a fun project, and might find bugs for D, I  
>> have to
>> point out that there are *plenty* of bugs in dmd that need fixing. Any  
>> would be
>> takers for this project should also consider lending a hand at fixing  
>> existing
>> bugs. Then again, fixing dmd bugs might be less fun, so I could  
>> understand if
>> someone preferred not to.
>>
>> I think this tool would be great once dmd is fully functional.
>
> I think it's a mistake to avoid looking for bugs since we already have  
> bugs to fix. We have bugzilla to keep track of them, and sure it might  
> take time to fix them, but at least they will be there.

I'm not saying, don't write a program to find bugs.  I'm saying, if you  
want to help D, a better option than trying to find bugs is to fix the  
bugs we have.  If all you want to do is find bugs, then I don't have any  
issue with that, and welcome the additional tools.  But we have a wealth  
of bug finders, and few fixers.  Someone who is good enough to write a  
D-code-generating program might have the same skillset as it takes to work  
on the compiler.  I'd love for that person to spend time fixing bugs  
rather than building a tool to find them :)

In other words, D doesn't *need* more bugs (though we will happily accept  
more bugs in bugzilla), it needs more fixes.

I didn't mean to sound like I don't think we should promote such a tool or  
that I don't like someone working on it.  I just want to also bring up  
that we need people to fix bugs too, and if you are talented enough and  
like doing either, I think it would be more appreciated by the community  
if bugs were fixed rather than generated.

> Also, many people submit bug fix patches. Different people are  
> interested in different kinds of bugs, and having some integer math bugs  
> (which is what csmith finds) may appeal to a particular fixer.

I hope that a csmith-like tool will be written and that it helps more  
people enjoy fixing bugs in dmd.  I hope *more* that the existing const,  
inout, alias this, template overload, @property, etc. bugs are fixed.

-Steve


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