SAS/C 5.10 Compiler Guru
05-Oct-90 21:18:54
Sb: #1209-SAS/C 5.10 Compiler Guru
Fm: Alan Bland 72707,3662
To: Syndesis 76004,1763
I'm sure SAS and Manx both have extensive test suites, but they are
probably isolated examples. For each compiler release since 4.00, all
Lattice/SAS had to do was compile my one large program (of course they
don't have it…) and then *run* it. 5.10 didn't even compile it, and on
two or three of the patches since 4.00, the program would crash when it
ran, due to no fault of mine.
Lattice definitly rushed some of their patches. In 5.04 (I think) they
added support for many library function to use registerized parameters, but
they clearly never tried running a registerized getcwd() because it
returned the wrong result. That was fixed in 5.05. I would think they
would have a test for getcwd() and all the other functions. Automated
testing of compiler libraries is so easy (compared to automated testing of
user-interface programs) that they should have been doing it long ago.