Re: make check (8.1) hangs forever

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> I just noticed the test was skipped in this report also:
>  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-12/msg00031.html
>
> So the approach I've taken is to mark this test as experimental for now.
> I.E. it won't be run unless we explicitly enable it.
> It's a nice test which hopefully we can use in future,
> but it's just too problematic at the moment.

Thanks!
I don't object, but this would mean that I'd want to run with
RUN_EXPERIMENTAL_TESTS set in my environment to ensure that this test
doesn't bit rot -- or tail regress.  It does pass for me on most of
the systems on which I test regularly.

To help with that, it might be worth mentioning the new envvar
in README-release.  Alternatively, using RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS or
RUN_VERY_EXPENSIVE_TESTS would have a similar effect, even if this
test doesn't qualify as expensive in the usual cpu or I/O resource
utilization sense.  We now know that it *is* expensive in terms of
maintenance cost, with these false-positives.

> Subject: [PATCH] tests: mark inotify-race as an experimental test
...
> diff --git a/tests/tail-2/inotify-race b/tests/tail-2/inotify-race
> index b1e1a7c..41d7bfb 100755
> --- a/tests/tail-2/inotify-race
> +++ b/tests/tail-2/inotify-race
> @@ -27,6 +27,10 @@ fi
>
>  . $srcdir/test-lib.sh
>
> +# This is an experimental test because sometimes it's skipped as noted below.
> +# Also gdb has a bug in Debian's gdb-6.8-3 at least that causes it to not
> +# cleanup and exit correctly when it receives a SIGTERM.
> +experimental_
>
>  touch file || framework_failure
>  touch tail.out || framework_failure
> @@ -37,14 +41,18 @@ case $(cat gdb.out) in
>      *) skip_test_ "can't run gdb";;
>  esac
>
> -# See if gdb works:
> -timeout 10s gdb -nx --batch-silent                  \
> +# See if gdb works and
> +# tail_forever_inotify is compiled and not inlined
> +timeout 10s gdb -nx --batch-silent                 \
>      --eval-command='break tail_forever_inotify'    \
>      --eval-command='run -f file'                   \
>      --eval-command='quit'                          \
>      tail < /dev/null > gdb.out 2>&1
>
> -test -s gdb.out && skip_test_ "can't set breakpoints in tail"
> +# FIXME: The above is seen to _itermittently_ fail with:

Typo: _intermittently_