Re: More ld testsuite tweaks

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Zack,

> > Not really no.  If it is a genuine bug it ought to be fixed.  If it
> > cannot be fixed, or you do not have the time to fix it, then the
> > reason for the failure at least ought to be documented in the comment.
> > If you do not know why it is failing and you do not try to track it
> > down then you may well missing an opportunity to uncover a problem
> > which is not just specific to the arm-epoc-pe toolchain but possibly
> > all arm toolchains and maybe even every toolchain.
>
>
> I did try to track it down, but got nowhere.  (I'm still not very good
> at tracing binutils' internal logic.)  Since I posted that patch, I've
> determined that it is a general PECOFF problem, but I know no more
> than that.  
>
> Alan Modra already approved the (general PECOFF) xfail.  I'd prefer
> not to take it back out again.  

No it is fine.  The reply above was sent before I saw your modified post 
which addressed the problem in a broader fashion.

> Over on the gcc side, we've found that
> having a baseline state of no unexpected failures is a very desirable
> thing - it means you can have confidence that any FAILs that show up
> in testing are your fault.

True - but I would prefer that we achieve such a state for binutils by 
fixing the existing bugs rather than just suppressing the tests that 
reveal them.  (Actually I would prefer that for gcc too... :-)  The 
problem I have found is that once a bug has been XFAILed in the 
testsuite it is left and ignored until it trips up a user in the real 
world and they report it.  I would prefer to never hear from users 
because they never encounter bugs.  (Rather than because they never use 
the binutils because they are so buggy...)

Cheers
  Nick