Bastian Blank wrote:
Package: ppl Version: 0.10-4 Severity: serious
The build of ppl needs 7 CPU-hours on a fast machine, including a long documentation run.
This is probably due to `make check', which is something you can disable if you are prepared to accept the risk of miscompilation of the library (something that has just happened on Debian/Alpha).
You should take into account that we use the PPL to validate mission-critical software. Consequently, our `make check' is very thorough. For PPL 0.11 we will probably add a `make quick-check' feature, but we will certainly not use it ourselves (because we know no single test in `make check' is truly superfluous).
Concerning the documentation, we use Doxygen to build the library's documentation. I don't know which subset of the available manuals the Debian package builds. In the past it was building also the developer's reference manual, something we advised against. Moreover, the instantiation-independent documentation is shipped with the library and there is no need to rebuild it.
Anyway, if it really takes 7 hours perhaps there is some other problem or I would not call the machine "a fast machine". Configuring the PPL with --enable-interfaces"c c++" (which is what I believe Debian does) `make check' takes less than 3 hours on our main server (`make -j 8 check' takes less than 34 minutes).
Also I saw at least 4 runs of the same test set.
You probably saw 4 completely different tests with the same name running. The PPL provides several template classes, whose behavior is completely different depending on the template specialization considered: the `make check' procedure tests with a subset of instantiations that allows to establish some confidence that the library has not been miscompiled. In other words, what you saw where 4 runs of different test sets, each set using the same source files, but compiled with different -DMACRO=DEFN options.
Automatic build of ppl_0.10-4 on lxdebian.bfinv.de by sbuild/s390 98
[...]
Build needed 06:58:18, 1434876k disk space
I see. Please let us know whether/how we can help. All the best,
Roberto