[webkit-dev] Simplifying syntax in test_expectations.txt (bug 86691)

[Dirk Pranke]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:30 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> On May 16, 2012, at 9:08 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> There has been some complaints / discussions about how syntax in
> test_expectations.txt is confusing (and I agree with you) on webkit-dev and
> at contributors' meeting.
>
> So I have a patch on https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86691 to
> simplify syntax in test_expectation.txt as follows:
>
> Bug modififers are bug numebr themselves for WebKit and URLs for non-WebKit
> bugs
> e.g. 12345 and crbug.com/12345 instead of BUGWK12345 and BUGCR12345
> respectively
>
> I think I might prefer webkit.org/b/12345 - it's a bit less concise but the
> meaning is more contextually obvious and you can cut and paste it into a
> browser address field to follow the link, rather than having to know what
> site to enter it into.
>
> : and = delimiters are no longer needed
> All modifiers and expectations show before test name
> e.g. 12345 WIN MAC TEXT IMAGE test.html instead of BUGWK12345 WIN MAC :
> test.html = TEXT IMAGE
>
> Would it be possible to also change the modifiers to lower case or mixed
> case? All-caps is hard to type and uncomfortable to read. As for where the
> modifiers go, was there a logical basis for the previous separation into two
> groups? Would we be losing something by doing that?
>

There was a semi-logical basis, in that the stuff on the right of the
test clearly specified the outcome of the test (PASS, IMAGE, TEXT,
etc.). The stuff on the left was less well defined: there's the bug
numbers, the platform/configuration info (MAC LINUX RELEASE, etc.),
and some other stuff that there is less of a good place for (SLOW,
SKIP, WONTFIX).

I think it makes sense to syntactically separate at least the
platform/configuration keywords from the outcome keywords. It might be
nice to separate the other things somehow as well, but I don't have
any great ideas for things that are clearly better than the existing
left/right convention.