[gmx-developers] Test Suite, CTest, CDash

[Esztermann, Ansgar]

Hello everyone,


a few years ago, I have been briefly involved in the gcc project. I was extremely impressed by the huge test suite and by the way it could be used to quickly detect regressions. Putting aside for the moment the fact that "correct behaviour" is much easier to define for a compiler than for a simulation engine, I think that gromacs would profit from a similar test suite.

So I've taken Mark Abrahams' Regression Tests and started to convert them to CTest. The simple and complex tests are already in my local git repository (although some of them are still failing). There is CDash support as well: http://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=Gromacs

I'm planning to extend and maintain these tests. Offhand, these points strike me as important:

-Integrate more of Mark's tests (i.e. kernel tests, double precision tests)
-Fix the tests that are failing (or the software, if the failure is genuine)
-Add more tests (unit tests, "bugzilla" tests triggering known bugs)
-Add coverage support

Any comments?

Regards,

A.
-- 
Ansgar Esztermann
DV-Systemadministration
Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, Abteilung 105