psql & regression (was: Error in new psql)

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> On 1999-12-11, Jan Wieck mentioned:
>
> >     I  added  a check to the rules regression test after that, to
> >     ensure  it  never  happens  again.   Unfortunately,   Peter's
> >     enforcement  to use old psql for regression prevented it from
> >     showing up.
>
> To be completely honest, I was just waiting to see what this was good
> for. As you have seen (or not), it was more or less disabled but still
> there.

    Maybe  it  sounded  the  like, but I really did not wanted to
    citicize your work. It was a great job and IMHO  a  big  leap
    forward  in user friendliness of psql. I expect all this tab-
    completion and  help  stuff  to  be  highly  appreceated  and
    honored. Let me be the first to explicitly say CONGRATS.

    What  I  just  wanted  to  point  out is, that such a little,
    subtle change in psql's input preprocessing could distort  an
    existing  feature.   In  this  case, it's totally clear to me
    that is was  only  disabled  and  still  there.  But  I  only
    stumbled  over  it  because  I tried to create a multi action
    rule by hand to evaluate some comment  I  was  writing  on  a
    list.   Without  that, the proposed procedure (I outlined) to
    update  expected  output  would  have  broken   the   "rules"
    regression test and stamped the broken results into expected.
    So  it  probably  wouldn't  have  been  noticed  until  after
    release.

    And  who  can  guarantee that this kind of flaw cannot happen
    anywhere else?  There are many, very  old  regression  tests.
    Some  of them go back to the roots, Postgres 4.2, and I'm not
    sure anyone ever looked at the expected  results  lately,  if
    they  are  really  what SHOULD be expected. The tenk data for
    example is something where even I don't  know  where  it  was
    coming from, and I already joined the Postgres community with
    release 4.2 back in 1994.

    All  this  IMHO  isn't  really  subject  to   your   personal
    responsibility.   The  interface  of  our  interactive  shell
    needed the now happened polishing for some  time.  Instead  I
    wanted  the backend developers to handle this major change in
    psql, which is a core utility of the regression suite, not as
    lax as past changes to it might have been.  That's all.


Jan

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