[vtk-developers] Debug leaks, dashboards and local behavior

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

Hi,

I would like to change the default behavior of debug leaks. Currently
when you turn it on, if you run tests locally and there are leaks a
test will pass. You will only spot the failure if you run the tests
with -V and scan the output. See,

976: vtkDebugLeaks has detected LEAKS!
976: Class "vtkBlueObeliskData" has 1 instance still around.
976: Class "vtkUnsignedShortArray" has 2 instances still around.
976: Class "vtkFloatArray" has 10 instances still around.
976: Class "vtkStringArray" has 7 instances still around.
976:
1/1 Test #976: Chemistry-TestBallAndStick .......   Passed    0.37 sec

This has caught me out on more than one occasion, including the recent
merge of the chemistry branch into VTK. We will work on getting these
fixed up, but I would like to make the test fail by default locally.
Does anyone remember the reason for doing this, it seems to go back
quite a way as it also looks for DART_TEST_FROM_DART.

Exporting either of those variables will then cause the test to fail
locally. If there is a good reason to do this, wouldn't it be better
to pass if the user explicitly exported a variable,
I_KNOW_I_TURNED_ON_DEBUG_LEAKS_BUT_I_STILL_WANT_TESTS_TO_PASS or
similar?

Thanks,

Marcus