Need for a Emacs regression test suite

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

dhruva writes:

 > Hi,
 >  The various changes getting into Emacs and number of things breaking
 > sporadically, IMO we need to have a regression suite. A collection
 > batch mode scripts and macros to test the GUI invocation.
 >  It will take time to build it but would be useful. We can catch
 > issues during big merges much earlier in the cycle.
 >  We could start small and build up the suite. What does the core team feel?

FWIW, XEmacs has a testing framework, the authors are well-documented
and few; most of the code is FSF-assigned.  The tests themselves have
a wider variety of authors as you would expect, but most files list
only an FSF copyright.  In 2001, Emacs passed more than half of the
tests without any adjustments to the tests, a few tweaks to the code
were needed.  I don't know about now, but it should be a good head
start.

I'm not willing to do the deskwork of checking assignment status of
authors (and don't have access to FSF assignment files anyway), but
would help tracking down authors who have not assigned or have
ambiguous records, as well as encourage them to do paperwork if
necessary.