Re: testsuite: Of all the timeouts provided always select the largest

["Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@mips.com>]

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008, Jim Blandy wrote:

> >   All the callers would have to be updated and unfortunately the dependency
> >  may not necessarily be linear.  For example for a fast target accessed
> >  through a slow port the factor for transferring data through, such as
> >  downloading a program image, would have to be higher than for a slow
> >  target accessed through a fast port.  Contrariwise the factor applied to
> >  actions involving execution on the respective systems.  In general I do
> >  agree it is a good idea, but that is a lot of work that best be well
> >  thought before commencing.
> 
> All true, except for the "all callers" part, I think: couldn't
> gdb_expect recognize a '-timeout-factor' flag as its first argument?
> Then we could update call sites as we came across them.
> 
> It's certainly not linear, but linear is better than constant, surely.
>  For the sake of setting timeouts, we only need an upper bound.

 Hmm, I have given it a little bit more thought and I believe it may be 
reasonable for boards to provide their own factors for classes of 
operations, let's say two for a start, corresponding to tranfer and 
execution latencies as noted above.  Then each of calling sites might use 
one of them according to operation performed, together, possibly, with a 
factor specific to the requested operation which the class factor would be 
multiplied by.  I am not sure if that is not too complicated, but it would 
better match the reality.  All the factors might default to 1 for 
simplicity as could call sites with no class annotation (your flag might 
become '-timeout-class').

 Any thoughts?

  Maciej