[Python-Dev] [Python-checkins] r66863 - python/trunk/Modules/posixmodule.c

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>  > Correct. But they might well be broken, no?
> 
> I would hope some effort is made that they not be.  If they generate a
> positive, I would expect that the contributor would try to fix that
> before committing, no?  If they discover that it's "false", they fix
> or remove the test; otherwise they document it.

That assumes they know. We had recently a number of test cases that
fixed security problems, and the tests would only run correctly on
32-bit systems. On 64-bit systems, they would consume all memory,
and either bring the machine down, or complete eventually with a failure
(because the expected out-of-memory situation did not arise). The author
of the code was unaware of its dependency on the architecture, and the
test would run fine on his machine.

Likewise, we had test failures that only failed if a certain locale
was not available on a system, or had locale definitions that were
different from the ones on Linux. There is a lot of potential for
tests to only fail on systems which we don't have access to.

> Whether that is an acceptable solution to the "latent bug" problem is
> a different question.  I'd rather know that Python has unexpected
> behavior, and have a sample program (== test) to demonstrate it, than
> not.  YMMV.

And it does indeed for many people. We get a significant number of
reports from people who find that the test suite fails, and then are
unable to draw any conclusions from that other than Python is apparently
broken, and that they therefore shouldn't use it - even if the test
that fails is in a module that they likely never use.

Regards,
Martin