[petsc-dev] bullshit in Plex example under complex

[Barry Smith]

> On Aug 29, 2015, at 5:47 PM, Jed Brown <jed at jedbrown.org> wrote:
> 
> Tobin Isaac <tisaac at ices.utexas.edu> writes:
>> How am I supposed to add a test to the intersection of a package
>> (testexamples_TRIANGLE) and a scalar type (testexamples_C_NoComplex).
>> It's pretty frustrating, given how obvious this would be with
>> something like sharness [1], that I couldn't easily figure this out.
> 
> I've used sharness a reasonable amount and generally like it, especially
> when paired with "prove".  A couple years ago, I did some exploratory
> work to parse PETSc makefile tests and generate sharness-style tests.  I
> still don't think it's a bad idea and might yet be able to get back to

  It seems to require a lot of boilerplate for each test. I sure as heck hope we don't have to write that by hand for each test.

  I'm not a fan of the "parse the PETSc makefiles approach"; I think we need to define a standard format for declaring tests that is very concise (only exactly what is needed; I have one try in a branch somewhere). Then we can have code that translates from the standard format to anything people want to try with testing scripts. I am even willing to manually convert makefile crap to this format when necessary 

  Barry

> it.