[phobos] FreeBSD test machine

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, September 25, 2011 23:39:00 Brad Roberts wrote:
> On Sunday, September 25, 2011 11:27:21 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 25, 2011 23:14:37 Brad Roberts wrote:
> >> The freebsd/32 box is running 8.1-RELEASE.  The /usr/share/zoneinfo
> >> has
> >> a predictable set of files in it all dated Jul 19, 2010.  The
> >> FreeBSD/64 box is 8.2 and the files are dated Feb 16, 2011.  Define
> >> "not up to date".
> >> 
> >> I can create you an account on either or both if you want.
> > 
> > Well, Chile has been messing around with their DST on a yearly basis for
> > the last two or three years, and it appears that whenever the files
> > were updated for this year's DST switches, it was too recent for either
> > version 8.1-RELEASE of FreeBSD or version 8.2 of FreeBSD, given that
> > std.datetime's tests are failing for America/Santiago on both when
> > testing the DST switches of this year. So, either the time zone
> > packages on those machine need to be updated (which may or may not be
> > reasonable - I've never used any of the BSDs, so I don't know), or I'm
> > going to have to figure out how to redo the tests so that they work
> > with the time zone files which are on those machines (which may or may
> > not be easy, given that the main problem with picking valid DST tests
> > is that Windows has the DST switches wrong something like 90% of the
> > time).
> > 
> > So, ideally, the time zone files on those boxes would be updated, but if
> > that's not reasonable, I'm going to have to figure out how to rework
> > the DST unit tests.
> > 
> > - Jonathan M Davis
> 
> Frankly, if the tests are that sensitive, the problem is the tests.  A Joe
> Random downloader of the source should be able to expect the code to
> compile and past tests on a reasonably modern os.  I'd argue that 8.x is
> modern enough (more so given that last I checked, 8.2 was the most recent
> 8.x release).  The job of the unit tests is to test the code, not how up to
> date the distribution is.

True, but the problem is that in order to test the correctness of the code, 
the tests must be quite exact. If the tests were Posix-only, it would be 
relatively easy to do. However, Windows is seriously messed up with regards to 
its DST information. It's almost always off outside of the US - especially with 
dates that are farther back - so it becomes quite difficult to test DST switches 
across OSes. Windows generally seems to do a better job with the current year, 
which is why I ended up testing 2011 for America/Santiago. I guess that I'll 
just have to see if I can rework the tests a bit. Worse comes to worst, 
Windows will get its own set of tests for DST, but I'm loathe to do that if I 
can avoid it.

- Jonathan M Davis