Re: [PATCH] [gdb/testsuite] Fix timeouts in gdb.base/tls-dlobj.exp

[Kevin Buettner <kevinb@redhat.com>]

Hi Tom,

I'll state at the outset that I don't have any firm objections to the
things you've done, but there are some things I'd like to understand
better first.

On Wed,  7 Jan 2026 10:19:42 +0100
Tom de Vries <tdevries@suse.de> wrote:

> When running the testsuite on a busy system, occasionally I run into
> timeouts in test-case gdb.base/tls-dlobj.exp (gdb build with -O0, as
> usual).
> 
> When building gdb with Address Sanitizer (and still with -O0), I always
> run into timeouts, though it may differ where in the test-case.
> 
> I can address this using with_timeout_factor, and the test-case finishes
> after a while without timeouts:
> ...
> real	2m30.139s
> user	2m32.834s
> sys	0m1.777s
> ...
> 
> But the preferred way to deal with this is to cut up the long operation in
> smaller observable steps, each with their own timeout, so I tried out
> eliminating the use of continue in the test-case, and using next instead.

This is the key thing that I don't understand.  Why should using 'next'
be faster than continuing to a breakpoint?

> In order not to spent too much time stepping through for loops like this:
> ...
>   for (i = 1; i <= 4; i++)
>     s0 (i, 10 + i);
> ...
> I rewrote those to a single line.

If using 'next' is truly better, then I'm fine with that change.

> With this new approach, I get instead:
> ...
> real	0m5.950s
> user	0m8.239s
> sys	0m1.318s

Wow - that's a truly astounding difference.

Kevin