Re: [PATCH 0/3] Keep track of files copied to host and target

[Doug Evans <dje@google.com>]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 8:59 PM, Yao Qi <yao@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> In current GDB testsuite, .py files (in gdb.python), file1.txt (in
> gdb.dwarf2), and .xml files (in gdb.xml) are copied to host at
> the beginning of the tests, and removed at the end of the test.
> However, GDB testsuite also copies files to target, but automatically
> track them in gdb.exp:cleanfiles, and remove them from target when
> each test is finished.
>
> This patch series is teach GDB testsuite to keep track of files copied
> to host and remove them when test is finished, the same as what we
> did for files copied to target.  The files copied to both target and
> host are tracked in an unified way.
>
> Patch #1 is to extend existing cleanfiles for not only target but also
> host.  In patch #2, we start to keep track of files copied to host in
> cleanfiles, so that each test doesn't have to remove them at the end.
> Patch #3 is to copy some needed .py files to host, to fix some fails
> in remote host testing.
>
> The patch series is tested in native and gdbserver on x86_64-linux.
> I also test it with my local board file to emulate gdb native testing
> in a remote host (host == target != build), result looks good.  I'll
> tweak it a little and post it shortly.  I also find some tests don't
> copy needed file to host, and I'll fix them separately.

Hi.

I hate to be a naysayer here, but I'm not convinced we should go down this path.

For one, I like files being left over after a test run.
I would certainly object to cleaning up test binaries in native runs
(at least without providing an easy way to not do that).  I run "make
check" and then manually play with the created binary *all the time*.
I'm quite sure I'd feel the same way if I were doing Canadian Cross
testing, or at least remote host testing.

For another, I'd like to see a patch that cleans up all the other
files (e.g., source files, object files, binaries) that dejagnu
downloads as part of building the testcases.  I could be missing
something, this is based on my experiments and maybe I missed
something. In my experiment, after "make check" had finished (at least
I think it finished) there were ~1000 files in ~30MB left on the
remote host.  If the test didn't finish it may have been because I'd
shutdown my machine too soon. :-) At any rate, it feels like what this
patch set will clean up is a drop in the bucket compared to that.
If we're not going to clean those up, I'd rather not complicate things
further but only solving part of the problem (and a relatively far
smaller part of the problem too).

Can we solve this problem differently perhaps?
Is this just an appeal to some view of cleanliness, or is there a
practical problem (running out of disk space or some such?) that the
patch set is intended to solve?