On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 07:05 -0400, Robert Dewar wrote: > > If you build the compiler with coverage instrumentation and run the > > testsuite, you might get a shock. It's not as well tested as you might > > think. > > If it gave anyone a shock to find out that the test suite did not > provide 100% coverage, then that person is not very familiar with > compiler technology. It is by no means SOP to try to get 100%
I guess I should have been more specific. The point I was trying to make is that the GCC testsuite was never intended to be a coverage testsuite. It is primarily a regression testsuite. I have run the testsuite under an instrumented compiler and, if I recall, the coverage averaged over all the files was about 40%. > coverage testing of a compiler, and in practice for many reasons, > very difficult (compilers often contain a lot of deactivated code > that comes from defensive programming against errors, since > compilers more than many programs routinely expect to be fed > rubbish, and work hard to behave nicely when mistreated in > this way :-) If you're determined enough, it is possible to test all of that code, too. Ben
