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List:       dart
Subject:    RE: [Dart] Re: [CMake] HowTo make another Dart client
From:       "Blezek, Daniel J (GE, Research)" <blezek () crd ! ge ! com>
Date:       2006-02-24 23:31:12
Message-ID: B744015F9200AA49B4E03549EED88B980FFEC043 () SCHMLVEM01 ! e2k ! ad ! ge ! com
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Matt,

  I think the idea of a small embeddable C/C++ library for creating and sending Test \
data to Dart would be extremely useful.  We have some of the pieces of that in the \
DartClient.java class.  It only sends existing XML to a Dart server, but it would be \
straight forward to add in a set of classes that could be used to construct the XML, \
perhaps using XSD as Scott mentioned.

  I also agree with Bill Hoffman that ctest has a great deal of flexibility and \
functionality in doing builds and running tests that would be fairly pointless to \
duplicate.

  However, if the API/library only contained classes to create results in code \
(leaving the contents to be generated by the enclosing application) and submitting to \
Dart, it would be extremely useful and complementary to ctest.  From my understanding \
of some of the uses you foresee for Dart, this approach would be preferable in many \
ways.  As I understand, your clients and servers might generate performance data \
internally; since ctest is geared toward running stand alone test executables, you \
would end up just using it for XML-RPC submission, and not in the manner it was \
designed.  Writing some utility classes that are easily and transparently converted \
to XML and submitted would be great.  I would suggest you could library-ize some of \
the ctest functionality that is built around a XML-RPC for c.  We tend to avoid \
Xerces like the plague and write our XML directly (do I hear a gasp from the XML \
gurus?).  In point of fact, Frost, an internal predecessor to Dart had such an API / \
library in Tcl and in Java.  It connected directly to the DB though, which is not a \
very good idea...

-dan

-----Original Message-----
From: dart-bounces+blezek=crd.ge.com@public.kitware.com
[mailto:dart-bounces+blezek=crd.ge.com@public.kitware.com]On Behalf Of
Matt England
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 4:22 PM
To: William A. Hoffman
Cc: Matthew England; cmake@cmake.org; dart@public.kitware.com
Subject: Re: [Dart] Re: [CMake] HowTo make another Dart client
likeCMake's ctest?


At 2/21/2006 02:59 PM, William A. Hoffman wrote:
> API's and libraries are much harder to write than applications.   So, you 
> may be on your own, as
> we (Kitware) most likely do not have the time to maintain an API/library 
> for ctest.

Fair enough.  We'll see what happens on our end.

> You could still have
> your programs call ctest with command line arguments, and your users would 
> not even need to know
> it was there.   I am sure your software uses some sort of installer, and 
> could make sure ctest was
> installed in such a way as to not be noticed by your users.

That is an option.  We consider such things for the vast array of things 
that we embed in our software (including databases, encryption, 
compression, XML decoding, and other things), and we have always preferred 
library "embeddability" thus far.

We also have a set of our own libraries that are shared between all of our 
applications, and we are comfortable with this library-creation process and 
can do it pretty quickly.  If we end up going this route (and it's way too 
early to tell right now), we'll make our own internal library to interface 
with Dart to share amongst our apps.  If it makes sense to do so, we'll try 
sharing this module with the outside world.  (We plan on open-sourcing our 
project, anyway, so everyone can view most of it, save for stuff we hold 
back for commercial purposes...but that's a longer story outside the scope 
of this thread.)

> ctest as an executable can run without
> CMake, and only requires a single executable.

That's good to know, and quite helpful.  Can it be made with no dynamic 
library dependencies outside of standard-system ones?

-Matt 

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