@c Copyright (C) 1996-2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
@c For copying conditions, see the file gpc.texi.
@c This file is part of the GPC Manual.
@c
@c Authors: Peter Gerwinski <peter@gerwinski.de>
@c          Frank Heckenbach <frank@pascal.gnu.de>
@c
@c Last modification: 2002-05-10 (file up to date)

@include macros.texi

@ifclear FAQONLY
@ifclear TESTREADMEONLY
@node Support
@chapter Where to get support for GNU Pascal; how to report bugs.
@cindex support
@cindex help
@cindex bugs
@end ifclear

@ifset TESTREADMEONLY
@include version.texi
@c Note: The following line gets inserted into the destination file,
@c       it does not apply to this Texinfo file!
This file was generated automatically from support.texi.@*
@sc{DO NOT CHANGE THIS FILE MANUALLY!}

@paragraphindent 0
Note: This file is the @file{README} file of the @file{test}
directory in the GPC source distribution, @emph{and} the file
@file{BUGS} in GPC binary distributions.

GPC @value{GPCMajor}.@value{GPCMinor}, @value{GPCVersion}

@settitle The GPC Test Suite
@node Top
@chapter The GPC Test Suite
@end ifset

Here you can find information on where to find the most up-to-date
information about GPC, how you can get support (professional or
voluntary), how to use GPC's Test Suite, and how to report new bugs
you might encounter.

If you have problems with GNU Pascal, please read the relevant
sections of the GPC Manual. The most current version of the manual
is available at
@uref{http://www.gnu-pascal.de/gpc-doc.html}
for online browsing.
You can also download the
@localuref{gpc-html.tar.gz,complete manual in HTML format (tar.gz)}.
The manual is also available in
@localuref{gpc.dvi.gz,DVI format (gzipped)} and
@localuref{gpc.ps.gz,PostScript format (gzipped)} for printing.

If the manual doesn't help you, here is what we recommend you to do:

@ifclear TESTREADMEONLY
@noindent @ref{FAQ}                Check the GPC FAQ
@end ifclear
@ifset TESTREADMEONLY
@itemize @bullet
@item Check the GPC FAQ (see the file @samp{FAQ} or the GPC Manual)
@item Join the GPC Mailing List
@item Look in the Mailing List Archives
@item Ask in a newsgroup
@item Get individual support for GPC
@item Find out how to report GPC bugs
@item If you have GPC sources, learn how to run the Test Suite to test your bugs reported
@end itemize
@end ifset

@menu
* Mailing List::           Join the GPC Mailing List
* Mailing List Archives::  Look in the Mailing List Archives
* Newsgroups::             Ask in a newsgroup
* Professional Support::   Get individual support for GPC
* Compiler Crashes::       If the compiler crashes @dots{}
* Reporting Bugs::         Find out how to report GPC bugs
* Testing::                If you have GPC sources, learn how to run
                           the Test Suite to test your bugs reported
@end menu

@end ifclear

@node Mailing List
@section The GPC Mailing List
@cindex Mailing List

There is a mailing list devoted to GNU Pascal. You can write to the
mailing list, e.g. if you have problems installing GPC or if you
found a problem with GPC (please see @ref{Reporting Bugs}). You can
also use it to discuss suggestions for improving GPC and, most
welcome, to offer your help or contribute code, documentation or
other work. Mails to the list should be in English.

To subscribe to the mailing list, send the command
@example
subscribe gpc your@@email.address
@end example
in the body of a mail to @email{majordomo@@gnu.de} (@strong{not} to
@samp{gpc@@gnu.de}!). The subject is ignored. (Please replace
@samp{your@@email.address} with your real email address.) For more
info, send a line @samp{help} to @email{majordomo@@gnu.de}.

You can send a message to the mailing list by sending email to the
list address @email{gpc@@gnu.de} as if it were a person.

To leave the mailing list, send the command
@example
unsubscribe gpc your@@email.address
@end example
to @email{majordomo@@gnu.de}.

There is also a (low-traffic) announce list,
@email{gpc-announce@@gnu.de} that you can subscribe to stay
up-to-date. To subscribe to the list, write an email with
@example
subscribe gpc-announce your@@email.address
@end example
in the body to @email{majordomo@@gnu.de}. If you like to announce a
contribution, a service or an event related to GPC, you are invited
to post to this list rather than @samp{gpc@@gnu.de}, but please
don't use the announce list for questions or discussions. Please
note that all mail sent to the announce list is forwarded to the
regular list, so you won't have to subscribe to both lists if you
don't want to miss anything.

There is also a German speaking mailing list,
@email{gpc-de@@gnu.de}. To subscribe send the command
@example
subscribe gpc-de your@@email.address
@end example
in the body of a mail to @email{majordomo@@gnu.de} (note the hints
above).

@node Mailing List Archives
@section The GPC Mailing List Archives
@cindex Mailing List Archives
@cindex Archives, mailing list

Perhaps your problem was already discussed on the list. There is a
searchable archive of the mailing list on the WWW. It can be browsed
or searched at
@example
@uref{http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/en/} (English)
@uref{http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/de/} (German)
@end example

The archive of the German GPC list is at
@example
@uref{http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc-de/de/} (German)
@uref{http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc-de/en/} (English)
@end example

@node Newsgroups
@section Newsgroups relevant to GPC
@cindex Newsgroups

To get support, you can also ask the Usenet newsgroups for help.
There are several Pascal related newsgroups, but none is dedicated
just to GNU Pascal, so use the one which is most appropriate for
your problem. For general Pascal questions, we recommend the
following one:

@multitable @columnfractions .5 .5
@item @uref{news://comp.lang.pascal.misc} @tab Pascal in general and ungrouped Pascals.
@end multitable

Pascal syntax related questions may be appropriate in:

@multitable @columnfractions .5 .5
@item @uref{news://comp.lang.pascal.ansi-iso} @tab Pascal according to ANSI and ISO standards.
@end multitable

The next newsgroup is a haven for beginners, answering questions
that would apply to almost any Pascal. However, if you have a
GPC-specific question don't post there -- use the GPC mailing list.
And when in doubt use the GPC mailing list.

@multitable @columnfractions .5 .5
@item @uref{news://comp.lang.pascal.borland} @tab Borland Pascal questions.
@end multitable

Don't forget to give back what you have obtained. None of us is
getting money for answering your questions (unless you pay us by
yourself). Please do your part by answering the questions of others
instead.

@node Professional Support
@section Where to get individual support for GPC
@cindex Professional Support
@cindex Commercial Support
@cindex Support, professional

GPC is free software and comes @strong{without any warranty}.

If you want to get professional support, you can hire an individual
or a company for providing such a service.

@uref{http://www.g-n-u.de,G-N-U GmbH} is doing large parts of the
development of GNU Pascal. This company offers special support for
GPC and can be contacted at @email{info@@g-n-u.de}.

More generally, to find a company or an individual who offers
support and other consulting services for free software, look into
the
@uref{http://www.gnu.org/prep/service.html,GNU Service Directory}.

@node Compiler Crashes
@section If the compiler crashes @dots{}
@cindex Compiler Crashes
@cindex Crash, of the compiler

If the compiler crashes, you have discovered a bug. A reliable
compiler never crashes. To help the maintainers fix this bug, it is
important that you send us a problem report.

If you're on Unix, you can find out where the compiler crashed if
you enable coredumps, then load the compiler (@file{gpc1}) plus the
core file in the debugger (@samp{gdb /your_path_here/gpc1 core}),
then type @samp{backtrace} to get a stacktrace. Include this
stacktrace in your bug report.

@node Reporting Bugs
@section How to report GPC bugs
@cindex Reporting Bugs
@cindex Bugs, reporting
@cindex Test Suite, writing tests

If you encounter a bug with GPC, please check whether it is one of
the known bugs@c
@ifclear TESTREADMEONLY
@ifclear FAQONLY
 (@pxref{Known Bugs})@c
@end ifclear
@end ifclear
. If not, please report it to the GNU Pascal mailing list@c
@ifclear TESTREADMEONLY
 (@pxref{Mailing List})@c
@end ifclear
. That way, they always reach the maintainers. Please note the
following points.

@itemize @bullet

@item
Please send a description of the problem. Try to give as much
information as possible, with the full text of any error messages
encountered, or a description of how some output varies from the
expected output. Always specify the operating system type with
version and the machine type (try @samp{uname -a} if unsure) as well
as the version of GPC which you get by typing @samp{gpc -v}.

@item
A good article on submitting bug reports can be found at either@*
@uref{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html} or@*
@uref{http://freshmeat.net/news/2000/02/26/951627540.html}

Another good article ``How To Ask Questions The Smart Way'' is
available as
@uref{http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html}

@end itemize

If the problem is with the compiler itself, not an installation
problem or something like this, please provide a test program to
reproduce the problem, and note the following hints. You can also
contribute test programs for features that are working in GPC to
ensure they will not break in future releases.

@itemize @bullet

@item
The test program should be as short as possible, but
@strong{by all means}, please send a @strong{complete} program and
@strong{make sure} that it still reproduces the problem before you
send it. Too often, users have sent code which contained obvious
syntax errors far before the actual problem, or just code fragments
that we could only make wild guesses about. This is unproductive for
us and doesn't help you get your problem solved.

@end itemize

@ifclear FAQONLY

The preferred form for test programs is the form that the automated
GPC Test Suite understands. Please, if at all possible, send your
test programs in this form which should be easy to do, so we won't
have to waste our time to bring them into this form, and can
concentrate on fixing the problem.

@itemize @bullet

@item
The file containing the main program @emph{must} have a name ending
with @file{.pas} and contain the keyword @samp{program}
(case-insensitively) and a @samp{;} in the same line to be
recognized by the Test Suite at all. Other files whose name ends in
@file{.pas} (e.g., units or modules needed by the program), must not
contain this.

@item
Since the Test Suite must run under very @dots{} nah @dots{} strange
operating systems, too, file names must be distinguished in their
first eight characters (case-insensitively) and should not contain
anything but letters, numbers, hyphens, underscores and a single
dot. Furthermore, any ancillary files (units, modules, includes,
data files) should not be longer than ``8+3'' characters. It is
often a good idea to use your name, nickname or initials followed by
a number as the file name.

@item
If your test program needs any units or modules, don't give them (or
their interfaces in case of modules) common names like @samp{Test},
@samp{Foo} or @samp{MyUnit}, unless you have very special reasons
to, because there might be subtle problems if several test programs
use the same name. Instead, it is recommended to prefix the
unit/module/interface names with the name of the main test program
or an abbreviation of it (if necessary because of the file name
restrictions). Furthermore, please avoid the use of units and
modules at all if the bug is not specific to them, in order to keep
the test as simple as possible.

@item
The test program, when run, should produce a line of output
consisting of the string @samp{OK} (followed by a newline) if
everything went as expected, and something else (e.g. @samp{failed},
possibly followed by the reason of failure) if something went wrong.

@item
However, if the program is intended to check whether GPC catches an
(intentional) error in the program, place the string @samp{WRONG}
somewhere in the test program, preferably in a comment in the line
that contains the intentional error, and make the program output
@samp{failed} or something like this if it does compile mistakenly.
@samp{WRONG} tests will be run with the option @samp{-w} to suppress
all warnings, so only real errors will be detected.

@strong{Note:} While it is possible to combine several @samp{OK}
tests in a single test program (if you make sure that it outputs
@samp{OK} only if all tests pass), you cannot put several
@samp{WRONG} tests into one test program. This is because the
compiler will fail (and the test therefore be regarded as
successful) already if @emph{one} error occurs. So, for @samp{WRONG}
tests, write only one check per test program. Also, try to keep such
a test program as simple as possible, to avoid the risk that it will
fail because of other problems (and therefore the test be mistakenly
considered successful).

@item
If the test should merely provoke a GPC warning, use @samp{WARN}
instead of @samp{WRONG}. This will run the test without @samp{-w},
but with @samp{-Werror}. However, such tests will also appear to
succeed if they produce a compiler error, not only a warning.
Therefore, when checking for a warning, it is often a good idea to
provide a complementary test (with expected success) and with
@samp{-w} in @samp{FLAG} or a compiler directive @samp{@{$W-@}} to
make sure that it's really just a warning, not an error.

@end itemize

The following special features of the Test Suite may be helpful for
constructing slightly unusual tests:

@itemize @bullet

@item
If the expected output is something else than @samp{OK}, place it in
a file @file{<basename>.out} (where @file{<basename>} is the name of
the test program without the @file{.pas} extension).

@item
If the test program expects some input, place it in a file
@file{<basename>.in}. It will automatically be redirected to the
program's standard input.

@item
If the test needs some special flags to be given to the GPC command
line, place them in a comment preceded by @samp{FLAG}, e.g.:

@example
(* FLAG --extended-pascal -Werror *)
@end example

@item
The source file name of the test program will be passed as the first
command-line argument to the test program run.

@item
If a test needs to be run in a special way, you can accompany the
program with a script @file{<basename>.run} that will do the actual
test after the test program was compiled. This script will be run by
@file{sh} (regardless of its first line). In order to be portable,
it should only use standard tools and features present in all
@file{sh} compatible shells (e.g., @samp{ash}, @samp{bash}, but not
necessarily @samp{csh}). The source file name of the test program
will be passed as the first command-line argument to the run script
in this case. The compiled file is called @file{./a.out} on most
systems, but, e.g., @file{./a.exe} on Cygwin. The environment
variable @samp{A_OUT} contains the base name (i.e., @file{a.out} or
@file{a.exe}, so you can always invoke the program as
@samp{./"$A_OUT"}).

@item
If a test needs to be compiled in a special way (e.g., to decide
whether to skip the test), place the commands in a script
(preferably called @file{<basename>.cmp}), and put the file name of
the script (without directory) in a comment preceded by
@samp{COMPILE-CMD:} into the source of the test program. The compile
script will be run @strong{instead} of the compiler and any other
action otherwise done for this test program, so it gives you maximum
flexibility to do whatever you need to do. This script will be run
by @file{sh} (regardless of its first line). In order to be
portable, it should only use standard tools and features present in
all @file{sh} compatible shells (see above). The first command-line
argument to the compile script will be the compiler to use,
including all options. The second argument will be the source file
name of the test program. For some typical tests, there are standard
compile scripts, e.g. @file{ia32.cmp} which will skip the test
unless run on an IA32 processor. This is necessary, e.g., when
testing assembler code. Of course, it's still better to avoid having
to use such scripts when possible.

@item
In some cases you may want to write @emph{randomized} tests. This is
not usually recommended since it makes problems found harder to
reproduce, but sometimes it might be useful (e.g., if you want to
cover a large parameter space). In such a case, the following
strategy can be used:

@example
@dots{}

uses GPC;

var
  RandomSeed: Integer;

begin
  RandomSeed := Random (MaxInt);
  SeedRandom (RandomSeed);

  @dots{} @{ do your normal tests @}

  @{ when printing an error message: @}
  if @dots{} then
    begin
      WriteLn ('failed (', RandomSeed, ') ',
               @dots{} @{ possibly additional information @} );
      Halt
    end
end.
@end example

This is a little unnatural since a random number is used to
(re-)seed the random number generator, but there's currently no way
to retrieve the internal state of the random number generator (and
in fact, it's not represented by a single number, but by an array).

Given the value of @samp{RandomSeed} in an error message, it should
then be possible to reproduce the problem by inserting this value in
place of the @samp{Random (MaxInt)}. Just be sure to print this
value in @strong{every} message of failure the program may produce.

@end itemize

@node Testing
@section Running the GPC Test Suite
@cindex Test Suite, Running

@emph{Note:} If you have installed a GPC binary distribution, you
usually don't have the Test Suite installed (you can download the
GPC source distribution to get it, however), so this section does
not apply to you. Still, you can find in the section
@samp{Contributing Tests to the Test Suite} how to report GPC bugs
in the form of new test programs so we can fix them as fast as
possible.

The files in the test directory and subdirectories are for testing
GPC only and should not be of any other use.

Note: A few of the tests do not make sense on all systems. They are
equipped with checks and will be skipped if they find the system not
suitable. Skipped tests do @strong{not} indicate a GPC bug, unless
you have a reason to be sure that the particular test should make
sense on your system.

@itemize @bullet

@item
To run the whole Test Suite, type @samp{make} in the test directory
(or @samp{make check} in the @samp{p} object directory after
building GPC).

@item
The output will show all errors encountered (hopefully none) and
tests skipped, and finally display a summary giving the number of
successful, failed and skipped tests. Any failed test indicates a
bug in GPC which should be reported to the GPC mailing list,
@email{gpc@@gnu.de}. Don't forget to mention the operating system
you ran the test on and any other relevant information about what
you did.

@item
You can also type @samp{make pascal.check-long} to get a long output
which is a sequence of file names followed by @samp{OK} for
successful tests, @samp{SKIPPED} for skipped tests (both in capital
letters), and anything else for failed tests.

@item
To run only some of the tests, you can type something like
@samp{make MASK="foo[1-7]*.pas"} or
@samp{make MASK="foo42.pas" pascal.check-long}.

@item
To clean up after running the tests, type @samp{make clean}.

@end itemize

@end ifclear
