[CMake] CDash questions

[Robert Ramey]

I’ve spent quite a bit of time going through the CDash Documentation at http://public.kitware.com/Wiki/CDash .

In spite of the fact that it seems I’ve been able to get this to work (project = Safe Numerics), I have a lot of questions:

The way I’m doing this now is the following:

a) I edit the CMakeList.txt file(s) and follow the procedure to create an Xcode IDE project.  This project contains a bunch of targets including ALL_BUILD, RUN_TESTS, and Experimental - among others
b) I build the target ALL_BUILD from the IDE - works as expected
c) I build the target RUN_TESTS from the IDE - find - runs a makefile which runs all the tests.
d) I build “Experimental” which seems to submit the test results to the my.cdash server.  This seems good as the page http://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=Safe+Numerics&date=2014-04-21# shows the results from the test run and I can on the various parts of the display to get the build type, build machine etc ….

So this looks good.  But I have a few questions:

a) I expect to see a list of all the test runs - or at least the the last run from each site.  But the display comes up blank until I click “Previous” at which time it display the test runs from the previous day.  What do I have to do to get a list of all test runs from all sites for all dates.

b) The whole setup is quite confusing.  I would like to think that if if users of this library include the  CTestConfig.cmake file that I give them - ie

## This file should be placed in the root directory of your project.
## Then modify the CMakeLists.txt file in the root directory of your
## project to incorporate the testing dashboard.
## # The following are required to uses Dart and the Cdash dashboard
##   ENABLE_TESTING()
##   INCLUDE(CTest)
set(CTEST_PROJECT_NAME "Safe Numerics")
set(CTEST_NIGHTLY_START_TIME "01:00:00 UTC")

set(CTEST_DROP_METHOD "http")
set(CTEST_DROP_SITE "my.cdash.org")
set(CTEST_DROP_LOCATION "/submit.php?project=Safe+Numerics")
set(CTEST_DROP_SITE_CDASH TRUE)

They will be able to submit their test results in the same way I just did.  Am I correct in my understanding of this?

Also I have some other questions which are not really related to my specific problem but rather to what the purpose of CDash actually is.  

a) Is it a system for gathering and recording the results of test runs made from different client configurations
b) or is it a system for running tests on the actual server hardware
c) or is it a system for automatically downloading projects to a client machine and running the tests and posting the results.  

It seems that it’s all three - but this is not at all clear from the documentation.  I sort of conclude this from the information that the myCDash server requests regarding how to run the tests, where is the code repository, etc.

For what it’s worth - here is what I need:

a) I have a programming library for Safe integegers - see http://rrsd.com/blincubator.com/bi_library/safe-numerics/
b) I want users to be able to download the library, run the tests, check the results, if they want, submit them to the my.cdash server
c) I want all other users to see these results so we can get an idea of the variety of platforms the tests have been run and where they might have failed.

Am I doing this right? Am I missing anything?

Robert Ramey
Robert Ramey Software Development
(805)569-3793
ramey at rrsd.com
www.rrsd.com





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