[Insight-developers] Testing framework

[Daniel J. Blezek, Ph.D.]

Hi all,

  As Bill Lorensen mentioned in today's Insight tcon, the testing
framework is ready to go.  The short & sweet version is like this (Unix
only):

For an "Experimental Build"
% cd <Insight-Build-Directory>
% make Experimental

For a "Nightly Build"
% cd <Insight-Build-Directory>
% make NightlyDashbordStart ; #Be warned, this does a cvs update!
% make Nightly

Then check: http://public.kitware.com/Insight/Testing/HTML/TestingResults/Dashboard/MostRecentResults-Nightly/Dashboard.html


There are three phases to the testing, for the casual user.  Build, Test
and Submit (make NightlyBuild, make NightlyTest, make NightlySubmit).  
Build is the obvious thing, creating a directory to put the results into,
Test runs all of the executables in the Insight checkout that have been
marked as tests, and Submit puts the results of Build and Test onto the
public.kitware.com web server, for rolling up into a dashbord.  We also
have testing on the Doxygen documentation creation, a log of the code
changes, and Coverage.  If you would like to do coverage testing, please
let me know.  Currently gcov is the only tool I have been using.

Experimental builds will show up on the dashboard tagged as such, and are
intended for you to submit build/test results anytime during the day.

Nightly builds are built against a specific set of code, a cvs snapshot
taken at 7:00am GMT (2:00am EST) each day.  Doing a % make
NightlyDashboardStart does this cvs update; creating a seperate check out
is advisable.

The dashboard is rolled up every half hour, on the hour during the
day.  At 2:00am EST, the dashboard for today is closed, and a new one is
opened for the day.  The nightly builds for a given day are against the
code checked in at the end of the previous day (i.e. 2:00am EST).

Currently the builds only run on Unix platforms, but we are working with
Kitware to get support in CMake for Win NT/9X/ME.

This is a first pass it doing this, so we may experience bumps along the
way.  Please fasten your seatbelts, and keep your hands in the car at all
times. 8)

Thanks,
-dan

--
Daniel Blezek, Ph.D.
blezek@crd.ge.com
Visual Information Program
Electronic Systems Lab
GE Corporate Research & Development