Re: Bytecode test suite

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Patrick" == Patrick Doyle <doylep@eecg.toronto.edu> writes:

Patrick> I have started writing a test suite for the JVM itself,
Patrick> rather than the libraries; that is, I have a program which
Patrick> will run each bytecode under a variety of circumstances and
Patrick> make sure the result is correct.

Sounds good.

Patrick> I'm thinking of starting a new project on SourceForge for
Patrick> this.

If you like, we could just add a new module to the Mauve repository.
Then it would be one-stop shopping...

Patrick> 1. Does Mauve already have such a test suite?  If not, would
Patrick> you be interested in having one?

There isn't one, and yes we'd be interested.

Patrick> 2. Does anyone know of an existing bytecode test suite?

I don't.

Do you mean just raw bytecodes?  Because it is also worthwhile to have
tests which are written in Java, then compiled and run against the
JVM.  For instance you can test things like proper operation of
various JVM-level things (what does "throw null" do, etc) without
having to write a bunch of bytecode by hand.  There are a few, but not
many, tests like this in the libgcj tree.  Of course we would
contribute those.

Another thing I'd be interested in seeing is a test suite for bytecode
verifiers.  The idea would be to collect unusual pass/fail cases to
stress test a verifier.

It might be useful to group all the JVM-level tests into a single
place.  I don't know.

Patrick> 3. Is there anyone reading who would be interesting in
Patrick> contributing (however little) to such a project?  Maybe
Patrick> choose a handful of bytecodes and write a thorough test
Patrick> suite?

I can contribute adminstratively -- set you up with an account on
sources.redhat.com, show you how to update the web pages (if you want
to), etc.  I don't have time to write tests right now :-(
I could probably periodically run the tests through our compiler and
through our JVM too.

Tom