Re: 8.5 release timetable, again

Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Tom Lane<tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> ... However this is quite haphazard since (a) the regression tests
>> aren't especially designed to exercise all of the WAL logic, and (b)
>> pg_dump might not show the effects of some problems, particularly not
>> corruption in non-system indexes. �It would be worth the trouble to
>> create a more specific test methodology.

> What I've been thinking of doing is having the regression suite take a
> backup after initdb and set archive mode on. when the regression suite
> finishes start the backup up and replay all the WAL.

> I'm not sure how to compare the databases since I don't think pg_dump
> actually works here -- a lot of the data is dropped by the end of the
> test.

Yeah, that's another problem with using the existing tests for this
purpose --- a lot of possibly-useful stuff isn't kept around to the end.
And the desire to keep the test modules independent limits the amount of
interaction between them too.  I really think we'd need a bespoke set of
tests to get very far with this.

This reminds me that pg_dump/pg_restore is another large pile of code
that receives no formalized testing whatsoever ...
        regards, tom lane